Google Stadia is Dead. But the Stadia Controller isn’t…
Google Stadia is finally, truly, dead. It shut down fully earlier this week, claiming it’s rightful place on killedbygoogle.com’s graveyard wall. While I was never exactly an advocate for the platform – in fact I specifically warned people about this eventuality – it’s nowhere near a joyous day. For a dedicated group of people, Stadia was the ideal solution to keep them gaming when no other option would suffice. The versatility and portability of Stadia meant it made a lot of sense for some folk, and to them I genuinely feel for. Anyone who purchased games on the closed wall ecosystem now has to repurchase those titles on other platforms and hope that their save games and accounts will still transfer over – plus they’ll need to find another way to play them, be it other cloud gaming solutions like NVIDIA’s GeForce Now or portable devices like the Steam Deck. Still, it’s an added expense and headache for them which isn’t great.
Happily though, Google has been pretty gracious in their defeat, as they’ve offered a full refund on any Stadia hardware purchases, including in my case my original Stadia Founders Edition kit from 2019. The Chromecast Ultra that came as part of that package is still just a Chromecast, so works regardless of Stadia, although for a little while the controller was left in limbo. Long story short, the Stadia controller isn’t a regular gamepad like you’d find connected to an Xbox or PlayStation. This is a WiFi controller designed to connect independently to the internet, acting as a standalone device that’s transmitting your inputs straight to Stadia’s servers, instead of connecting to a local device like an Xbox or PlayStation via Bluetooth or in Xbox’s case a frustratingly proprietary standard instead. That means the Stadia controller can’t be used with any other systems, and is functionally e-waste.
That is, until this week, when Google also released a firmware update for the controller that converted its WiFi radio to Bluetooth, allowing it to be paired with any device you like. The process for updating your controller is really simple. You’ll need to plug your controller in for a while to charge first, then head to the website I’ll link in the description. You’ll have to use Google’s Chrome browser to do this by the way, then select your controller to verify it. Unplug it, then hold the options button (the one with three dots) while plugging in your controller. Then you’ll need to contort your hands to press option, assistant, A and Y at the same time. That unlocks the controller’s firmware. Then select the controller again from the list, and once more to install it. It takes about a minute to install, then that’s it. It’s ready to pair. To do that just hold Y and the Stadia button to put it in pairing mode, then you can connect it to any device you like. I paired it with my Steam Deck for multiplayer games like Overcooked, but for now I think I’ll have a play with my laptop instead.
If you don’t have a Stadia controller right now, they are still being sold for cheap on places like Marketplace and eBay, so if you want a pretty decent controller for cheap, maybe take a look at one of these! I’m really glad Google put in the work to make the controller connect via Bluetooth, and refunding hardware purchases was pretty unexpected too. While I do still feel for those that did invest in the ecosystem only to have it completely wiped out, I am also somewhat glad their business model didn’t succeed. Forcing people to purchase games they might already own on other platforms just to stay within the walled garden is something I’m a strong critic of, so to see that fail where more open platforms like NVIDIA’s GeForce Now which just uses your Steam or Epic accounts is great.
