Google is facing a lawsuit over the claims about 4K streaming on the Stadia cloud-based gaming platform.
According to 9to5Google, the lawsuit was first filed in New York in October 2020. It recently caught everyone’s attention when the suit was moved to New York Federal Court. The lawsuit alleges that Google “overstated” streaming quality and “display intent” to “juice members” for their new gaming platform. It also searches for “damages” from Google.
The report pointed out that Google Stadia has indeed been faced with issues with 4K streaming. A separate report from AndroidPolice notes that Google Stadia had the capabilities to stream games at 4K resolution, but support was limited to just one device, Chromecast Ultra, until March 2020. The client added 4K support networks much later. The report also said that some graphically intensive games were provided at a lower resolution. For example, Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 offered up to 1440p / 30fps. As for Eternal Doom, developers had promised to make “true 4K”, but just before their launch, they said it would have been upgraded from 1880c.
The latest reports come after Google announced that they will be shutting down their in-house gaming studios. The company said the move would help increase focus on content catalog from Google business partners.
“Creating best-in-class games from the ground up takes many years and a huge investment, and the cost goes up dramatically. As we focus on building on Stadia’s proven technology as well as deepening our business partnerships, we have decided that we will no longer invest in bringing content that is unique from the Stadia. our in-house development team SG&E, beyond near term games, ”said Google in a blog post.
Interestingly, a recent Kotaku report revealed that Stadia’s leadership was unclear about the future of the indoor play sector. The report said that Stadia developers learned about closing the indoor play studios at the same time as everyone through an internal email and conference call with Google Stadia VP and GM Phil Harrison. Just a week before the announcement, Harrison had written to the team about the “great progress” studios they had made.