As Stadia nears the final curtain, Google has launched its last game and is promising to release a tool this week to enable Bluetooth connections on its Stadia Controller. According to The Verge, the last Stadia game to launch on the service is Worm Game, a test game that was technically available on Stadia before Stadia launched publicly in November 2019. Developers at Google have decided to release the game just before the streaming service disappears next week.
“Worm Game is a humble title we used to test many of Stadia’s features, starting well before our 2019 public launch, right through 2022,” says Google in its listing for the newly published title. “It won’t win Game of the Year, but the Stadia team spent a LOT of time playing it, and we thought we’d share it with you. Thanks for playing, and for everything.”
Alongside the new game, Google is also committing to enabling Bluetooth on Stadia controllers. Google Stadia owners will be pleased to hear there’s a self-serve tool coming next week that will enable Bluetooth on the Stadia Controller. “We’ll share details next week on how to enable this feature,” says a Google Stadia community manager in a forum post.
Google originally launched the Stadia Controller as a device that connects directly to Stadia services and had the Bluetooth chip disabled. According to The Verge, after news broke of the Stadia shutdown, fans have been finding ways to save the controller from an e-waste fate by using workarounds to connect it wirelessly to other devices.
Workarounds like connecting to an Android device will no longer be required thanks to this new tool. It means that most Stadia players that purchased a Founders or Premiere edition will have been effectively gifted a free Bluetooth controller thanks to Google’s refunds.
Google Stadia is shutting down on January 18th at 11:59PM PT / 2:59AM ET on January 19th. Google has been refunding all Stadia software purchases from its streaming store and even hardware purchases made from the Google Store and expects most to be processed by the January 18th shutdown date.
Players will lose access to all titles and saves on Stadia next week, but many publishers are allowing Stadia players to bring their purchases and game progress to other platforms. Here are many of the options that The Verge collected for your review.
All that’s left now is to see exactly how Google shuts the Stadia doors. Will there be a streaming goodbye at 11:59PM PT? Or will players simply get kicked out of games and the stadium lights go out?
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