Stadia has said it will try to fix a bug stopping people from playing Journey to the Savage Planet – a game from the studio it acquired, but whose staff it has now made redundant.
The bug is a serious one – the game currently freezes on the main menu, making it unplayable – but has so far lain unaddressed, as there is no-one left to fix it.
Reddit user lordubuntu first flagged the issue at the beginning of February – just a day after Google announced it would shut down its internal Stadia studios, including Journey to the Savage Planet’s developer, with around 150 jobs affected.
Lordubuntu was told by Stadia support that the bug would be passed to publisher 505 Games to fix. After not hearing anything more for a week, Lordubuntu chased the issue – only for Google Support to suggested they contact 505 Games directly.
On contacting 505’s customer support, lordubuntu was told there was nothing the publisher could do “since all of the game code and data on Stadia is owned by Google”.
Asked if this meant the game was broken permanently, a 505 Games representative stated that Google had acted as publisher for the game on Stadia, and that since its developer Typhoon Studios was also now part of Google, it was only Google who could fix the problem.
The above was collated together in a large thread on the Stadia reddit, where Stadia community manager Grace acknowledged the issue:
“Hi folks, I understand how frustrating this situation is, and I’m sorry for the delayed update,” GraceFromGoogle replied. “We’re actively working with our partners to identify a fix, and I will do my best to pass updates along.”
Development on all internal Stadia projects has now ceased, while Google has said it will offer its streaming tech to publishers.