Stadia readies support for adding friends via email, phone number

Abner Li | Jul 27 2021 - 11:31 pm PT

Google this evening updated a privacy setting in Stadia that lets you “control what information is visible to others through newly added features.” The change in question suggests that you’ll soon be able to send Stadia friend requests if you know a person’s email address or phone number.

Upon opening the Stadia app, you’ll notice an orange badge on your avatar that guides you to “Privacy” settings. A prompt explains that a new preference has been added, and it appears at the top of the screen.

You currently have the option to let “no one,” “friends & their friends,” or “all players” send you a friend request. Since the streaming platform’s launch, this has involved knowing their Stadia Name.

The new “Using contact information” option will “allow others to send you friend requests using contact information such as email address or phone number from their Google contact list.”

This notably replaces and expands a preference added in June of 2020 to let others “find your Stadia Name and avatar with the email address used at account creation.”

Despite that toggle existing for the past year, you cannot currently add a friend on Stadia via email address. Today’s update does nothing to change that or add support for phone numbers, suggesting that Google is currently in the process of rolling out the underlying support/setup for this capability.

The field in the “Find players” page today only accepts Stadia Names. With the revamped setting, one would presume that the expanded Stadia friend request process over phone and email comes into play here.