Google is discontinuing Stadia, its game streaming service. According to CEO Phil Harrison's blog, the platform, which launched in 2019, is attracting fewer players than the company had hoped.

Google hoped to market Stadia as a game-based alternative to streaming services like Netflix and Spotify. However, it was a failure.

"While Stadia's approach to streaming games was built on a solid technological foundation," Harrison wrote, "it has not become as popular as we expected, so we made the difficult decision to discontinue Stadia."

Stadia users will be able to play games until January 18. Google also expects to have reimbursed all players for the money they spent on Stadia software and hardware by then. Google still sees opportunities to use the technology behind Stadia in other places. This is possible, for example, with the video platform YouTube, the app store Google Play, or augmented reality projects.

Stadia is far from the only game streaming platform. A year after its initial release, Amazon announced its own counterpart, Luna. However, established names in the game industry, such as Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PlayStation, have services that allow a game to be played directly via the cloud.