Stadia Crowd Play Games Coming this Year, Splash Damage Working on Exclusive Title, and Makers Program Announced

Due to GDC 2020's cancelation due to COVID-19 Google decided to publish their keynote presentation online. With a helpful bullet-point summary on Reddit as well. With Google promising new features such as new games, easier to sign up, and a new game coming from Gears 5 multiplayer developer Splash Damage.

Google will be donating to the GDC relief fund to support indie developers who were counting on GDC to boost their business.

Play Billing Library is now available in Unity. This increases payment, subscription, and in-app purchase options in Unity, one of the Stadia development engines.

Google Cloud detailed two open-source platforms they've created - Open Match (in partner with Unity) to manage matchmaking services, and Agones (in partner with Ubisoft) with a larger project called Google Cloud Game Servers to roll up cloud servers globally. Both Stadia and GCP have a common platform. Interesting statement, "Of course, Stadia games can run on any cloud." Not sure what that means.

Now we're into the Stadia segment!

More than 30 games and more than 60+ game patches since launch.

Today, a brand new player can sign up for Stadia, check their connection, and get into a game in under four minutes. An existing player can get into a game in under 9 seconds.

Crowd play games will launch this year. Transition from YouTube to game will launch this year.

New game coming from Splash Damage in London, direct partnership with Stadia.

There was a slide up with the latest list of developer partners.

Stadia announced the Stadia Makers program for indie Unity developers. Does not require exclusivity, but it does appear to require that you launch with Stadia day and date as other platforms. They are positioning this as a "self-publishing" program. More details here.

New integrations today: Backtrace (for errors and debugging), Vivox (in-game voice and text chat, used by Ubisoft and Riot Games), PlayFab (from Microsoft, managed game services).

Google Stadia has had a rough launch and post-launch period. With expensive games, large bandwidth requirements, poor performance, and lack of games. All these new additions sound promising but with the Xbox Series X and PS5 on the horizon how will Stadia stand up? Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass has been a hugely popular feature for both console and PC gamers while Sony has a large selection of exclusives to look forward to. Not to mention Nintendo has been killing it with the Switch, as shown with the recent success of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. 

Adam Siddiqui,
Senior Editor, NoobFeed
Twitter | YouTube | Facebook