Stadia

[Update: Demo] State Share beta coming to Google Stadia this summer with Crayta

Kyle Bradshaw | Jun 18 2020 - 10:48 am PT

Last year at GDC 2019, Google unveiled Stadia to game developers with a strong focus on new features that would be nearly impossible on traditional gaming platforms but are made easy with cloud gaming. One of those features, “State Share,” will be arriving for Stadia in beta this summer in support of Crayta.

It’s now been over a year since Stadia was unveiled at GDC 2019, and over six months since the service launched in earnest, and yet Google’s game streaming service is still working to deliver on the promises of that original demonstration. Features like using the Google Assistant to get help in a game and streaming your gameplay directly to YouTube are still seemingly a ways away from launching.

One of the more ambitious features shown in that same demo, below, was the ability to save your place in a game and share it with others with nothing more than a link. What is included in a particular link is entirely up to the developer’s creativity. One example given was for streamers to craft challenges for their audience or allow them to re-create fan favorite moments.

We’ve already gotten a small glimpse into the potential for State Share, as Google has begun sharing links that can take you directly into playing a particular game on Stadia. Similarly, State Share links should allow you to immediately launch into the correct game and jump in from the exact place that was shared to you.

Thankfully, we won’t need to wait long to find out more, as Crayta, one of the three “First on Stadia” titles announced at the recent Stadia Connect event, is going to bring a beta version of State Share. Crayta’s premise is to bring the power of the Unreal Engine and make it accessible to folks, regardless of their (lack of) game development experience.

This week, the folks at Unit 2 Games have shared (via Stadia Source) that Crayta intends to launch with State Share to make sharing your games easier. Once you’ve gotten to a point where you’re ready to share your game with your friends and family, you can simply send them a link and they’ll be able to jump right in to a session via Stadia. Or you can use a link to share your creation session with a co-creator who can help you in the process or at least be an active playtester.

A player who has made a game can share a link on social media. This link launches Stadia and takes them directly into a session of that game on Crayta.

Someone making a game over a number of sessions just wants to launch directly into create mode each time they launch Crayta, so they create a link to save as a Chrome bookmark.

A streamer is having fun creating a game and wants to get more people involved. They generate and share a temporary link that takes people directly into their edit session. When the streamer finishes the link expires.

A YouTuber wants their viewers to come and join in their play session, so they generate and share a link in chat. People clicking on the link will be taken to the exact session that the streamer is in (note: if the server is full they will be taken to a new instance of the same game).

Without State Share, this would have normally required you to share a unique code to your friends that they would need to copy down, open Crayta, enter the code, and join. While not the end of the world, by any means, it’s a process that’s far more convenient with State Share.

Update 6/18: While the in-depth blog post gave a pretty clear idea of how State Share will work when it arrives with Crayta, the Google Stadia blog has now offered a video showing exactly how State Share will work. In it, we see a streamer share a link to their session, and a viewer clicks the link which launches directly into Crayta on Stadia and pops you into the same session.

Interestingly, both the video and the accompanying interview allude to another previously announced but currently unavailable feature of Google Stadia — the ability to easily stream gameplay to YouTube. With any luck, we may see this finally arrive in the coming weeks.

Discovery can be a big issue when it comes to sharing games, so State Share Beta’s ability to create and share a link that teleports players instantly into your creation is hugely powerful. It also gives YouTube creators and streamers the ability to involve their community in games too. We’re looking forward to seeing how everyone connects with their friends and communities within Crayta.

As for Crayta itself, thanks to another, simultaneously released trailer, we know that the game will arrive on July 1st.

Crayta will launch this summer on Google Stadia as a free-to-claim title for Stadia Pro members.