How Google's Grand Plan to Make Its Own Games Fell Apart

In March 2019, Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco to tell gamers what he owed them. And while Stadia launched in November 2019 with third-party games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Destiny 2—and would eventually add dozens to its roster—Google’s own Stadia games never materialized. Earlier this month, Google announced it was closing Stadia Games and Entertainment, and laying off the 150 game developers it hired to make first-party games for Stadia just a year or two after hiring them. But Google’s failure with Stadia Games and Entertainment reflects tech giants’ broad inability to foster game development processes in environments optimized for optimization. Four current and former Stadia employees speaking with WIRED say that despite Google’s substantial investment and hiring spree, it never could wrap its head around game development.