Stadia's collapse means the exclusive horror game Gylt will finally release for the rest of us
Gylt was a Stadia launch title when it came out in 2019 and has remained exclusive to the platform.
Remember Gylt? Perfectly fair if you don't: It's a singleplayer action-adventure horror game created by Rime studio Tequila Works, and it released in 2019 as a Google Stadia exclusive. And so it remained, despite some rumbling from the developers about going multiplatform. But the looming collapse of Stadia means it's finally going to happen—eventually.
"Spooky season is around the corner… And we bring terrific news!" the studio announced (via Eurogamer). "We’ve been working on it for a long time and it’s finally time to make it official: GYLT is going multiplatform in 2023!"
It is admittedly not the most detailed announcement of all time, but I think the Gylt situation overall kind of encapsulates Stadia's biggest problem: Despite being a platform exclusive from a reputable indie studio, it had very little exposure or visibility, and went largely unnoticed at a time when people were leaning heavily into at-home entertainment (like playing videogames) because of the pandemic. Gylt owners aren't going to take a financial hit from the Stadia shutdown because Google is offering refunds across the board, but it's obviously a problem for anyone who wants to keep on (or start) playing—and it's not great for Tequila Works, either.
Stadia's coming shutdown—it's going away for good in January—has left a number of developers looking for new homes for their games. Prior to the Tequila Works announcement, Ubisoft, IO Interactive, and Bungie said that they're also looking into other options for their players. For developers with products on the verge of being released, though, it was an even more unpleasant shock: Mike Rose of No More Robots, for instance, said the studio had a game slated to launch on Stadia in November and expressed concerns about possibly not being paid because the platform is disappearing. "To all the people who kept begging us 'PLEASE BRING YOUR GAMES TO STADIA'—this is why we didn't," he tweeted.
To all the people who kept begging us “PLEASE BRING YOUR GAMES TO STADIA” — this is why we didn’t hahaSeptember 29, 2022
Splash Damage, which released the eight-player party shooter Outcasters as a Stadia exclusive in 2020, suggested that it could make a similar move, although it hasn't committed yet, saying only that "we need to take a couple of days to evaluate the options for Outcasters moving forward."