Stadia

Stadia officially announces Family Sharing, Messaging, and more

Kyle Bradshaw | Nov 16 2020 - 12:10 pm PT

The last few weeks have been a busy one for Google Stadia in the build up to its first anniversary. Today, Stadia has formally announced the launch of new features like family sharing, messaging, and more.

This Thursday, November 19, will mark the one-year anniversary of Google Stadia’s launch to those who preordered the Founders Edition bundle. No doubt in anticipation of that milestone, Google has steadily launched a bevy of new features over the last two weeks, including some that have been long anticipated.

Today, on the Stadia Community Blog, Google has formally announced all of the features as what they’re calling a “Stadia Update.” Let’s check out the full rundown.

First up, we’ve got Family Sharing, the much-anticipated ability to let members of your Google Family Group have access to your Stadia library. Some are a bit disappointed that, much like almost every other example of family sharing for games, you need to own two (or more) copies of a game in order to play multiplayer games together. However, it was a welcome surprise to see that games claimed through Stadia Pro are indeed eligible to be shared with family members.

Next up, Stadia is formally expanding Messaging, which went into early testing in Italy last week, to all Stadia supported countries. While the global rollout doesn’t seem to have happened at time of writing, messaging should become available sometime today. Once it goes live, you’ll need to go through a short onboarding process where you’ll get to decide precisely who can message you, such as just your friends or anyone at all.

Coinciding with Messaging, Stadia has also recently made some major changes to profile pages. Specifically, you can now see — depending on privacy settings, of course — things like a player’s recently played games as well as their friends list.

Lastly, Stadia has also launched two new enhancements to their screenshot and video captures. Now, when recording a video clip, the in-game voice chat is also included in the recording — unless you’re in a party, as these are considered private. Additionally, there is now an easy way to share your captured screenshots and videos from both the web and mobile apps.

With all of these features arriving within days of the first anniversary, one begins to wonder what, if anything, Google has in store for us on the 19th.