What you need to know
- Google Stadia will be shutting down on Jan. 18, 2023, and all games on the service will be unplayable.
- Splash Damage announced its Stadia exclusive Outcasters will not be coming to other gaming platforms.
- The studio said the game was built for Stadia and would require significant work to bring it elsewhere.
Competitive multiplayer and Stadia exclusive Outcasters will not be ported to other platforms once the streaming gaming service shuts down in January, developer Splash Damage confirmed today.
The studio noted that it had no plans to bring the arena combat game to other platforms, and said the design of the game was built for Stadia and would require more work to port it. The developer also released a short video showing off the development of the game.
"It is with a heavy heart that we inform you that we do not have plans to bring Outcasters to other platforms at this time," Splash Damage announced on Twitter. "Outcasters was designed and built exclusively for Stadia, with many of its systems heavily reliant on the platform, significantly increasing the complexity of the work required."
Splash Damage had been contemplating the future of the game after Google announced it would be shutting down Stadia early next year. All games released on Stadia, including Outcasters, will no longer be playable after Jan. 18. The game did take advantage of two Stadia exclusive features with Crowd Play and Crowd Choice, both used for YouTube streamers.
pic.twitter.com/7RxOGFadCxOctober 12, 2022
The announcement comes as studios are planning how to migrate players' purchases or save data from the soon-to-be dead gaming platform. CD Projekt RED detailed how players could transfer their Cyberpunk 2077 saves from Stadia to PC and consoles today, while the Embr developer is giving Stadia players a free Steam key to those who bought it.
The fate of the last Stadia exclusives remain to be seen. Tequila Works recently announced GYLT will be going "multiplatform" in 2023, while Q-Games is openly searching for a publisher to move PixelJunk Raiders somewhere else. That leaves tinyBuild's construction game Hello Enginner and Bandai-Namco's 64-player battle royale title Pac-Man Mega Tunnel Battle as Stadia exclusives that could also bite the digital dust if there are no plans to port either.
