A YouTuber clocked over 6,000 hours of Red Dead Redemption Online on Google Stadia before the service shut down, and received a farewell package from Rockstar.
Google Stadia is officially down for the count, and with it, Google's ambitions in the cloud gaming space. Servers were shut down on Jan. 18, and right unto its final breath, a few loyal customers stayed with it.
Of course, most of them jumped ship when Google announced the service was due to be shut down in January. Some of them had no choice because they had clocked too many hours on some games. One of these is a YouTuber called Colour, who clocked over 6,000 hours of Red Dead Redemption Online on Stadia.
Colour ran into quite a uniquely frustrating situation when Google announced that Stadia and all its services, including Red Dead Redemption Online would be shutting down. He's clocked in nearly 6,000 hours of Red Dead Redemption Online on the service. Read Dead Redemption Online is a game that has no cross-progression and does not store its saves on Stadia's cloud network. Colour's case caught the attention of several gaming media outlets after he put out a Tweet on his issue and published a video explaining it in detail.
Red Dead Redemption Online on Stadia
Red Dead Redemption 2 and its multiplayer counterpart, Red Dead Redemption Online were among the most popular games on Stadia. When Stadia servers went offline, all players who had the game in their libraries lost access to it. However, Rockstar, taking Colour's case into account implemented a measure for all Stadia players to transfer their progress to a different platform. Provided, of course, that they played the game within 30 days of Stadia's shutdown announcement.
Rockstar's Read Dead care package and Colour's final stadia stream
Rockstar also went full measure, recognizing Colour's dedication to the game and to Google Stadia. They rewarded the YouTuber with a care package, thanking him for his loyalty. Colour streamed the game on his channel one last time on Stadia before it shut down, in an emotional farewell to the cloud gaming service.
Stadia's shutdown process went smoothly
Google went through the shutdown process quite admirably. All Stadia users received full refunds. These refunds covered any game they purchased on the platform as well as the product itself. Players get to keep their controllers but will lose access to the service itself, which was entirely online. The controller itself received an update that made it compatible with other platforms.
Additionally, developers received monetary compensation for their investment in the platform. This was a concern expressed by many indie developers back when Google announced the shutdown. A final video game called "Worm Game" was offered through the platform as a gesture of thanks. This game is a rendition of the classic "Snake" video game.