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Stadia for Android TV bug freezes controls when you pause a game, Google is aware

Google Stadia makes it pretty easy to stream games on your TV, thanks to its new Android TV app, but some users are reporting a pretty frustrating issue. For some reason, the Stadia app for Android TV is leaving controls temporarily broken if a game is paused for too long.

As reported on Reddit and Stadia’s community forums, this Stadia for Android TV bug sees the controls to a game freeze if the user pauses the game, especially if the game is left paused for more than a moment or so. When the bug occurs, most controls will be left inoperable including directional controls and ABXY buttons. This appears to only happen with the Stadia Controller, not Bluetooth controllers.

The issue seems to have started earlier this week and has been confirmed by several users this week. It’s been reported primarily on Chromecast with Google TV, but other Android TV hardware seems to have the same issue which points to it being an app problem rather than hardware. As far as we’re aware, this issue is not affecting Chromecast Ultra users. We have experienced the bug in our testing this week.

Google has confirmed this is a known issue that is being investigated, but there’s currently no timeline on when a permanent fix might roll out.

Thankfully, there is a pretty simple workaround in the meantime. If you encounter this bug, pressing the “Stadia” button on the center of the controller seems to “wake” it, bringing controls back to their normal state.

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