‘The Quarry’ was supposed to boost Stadia; now it’s not even coming to Google’s platform

Ben Schoon | Jun 20 2022 - 8:30 am PT

During its first two years, Google had a lot of big names on board to help bolster Stadia, but many of those have since started to decline. According to a recent report, “The Quarry” was originally supposed to be a major release on Stadia, but now it’s not even coming to the platform.

‘The Quarry’ would have been a ‘signature’ Stadia game

Axios reports this week that, in 2020, Google’s deal with Supermassive Games was supposed to lead to “The Quarry” playing a significant part in boosting Stadia. The game would have arrived as a “signature” release for the platform, which sounds like it may have been an exclusive of some sort.

Obviously, that deal fell through.

“The Quarry” has since been released on June 10 for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC gamers through Take-Two Interactive, a publisher best known for Borderlands and its 2K Sports titles. But the game itself was developed by Supermassive Games, which Google had publicly announced a partnership with in 2020 through its Stadia Games & Entertainment initiative. Less than a year after that announcement, Google shuttered the studio, and canceled all projects that were in the pipeline, including all first-party titles that were being produced for Stadia.

Since The Quarry’s release earlier this month, it has seen critic acclaim, and the horror game has gathered mostly positive user reviews on PC.

At this point, Stadia is not at all on the roadmap for The Quarry, at least in any public manner.

“High on Life” was also supposed to be coming to Stadia

Also mentioned in this Axios report is that “High on Life” was supposed to be another “signature” release on Stadia. The game, produced by Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland and studio Squanch Games, was revealed recently as coming to Xbox and PC.

Google never publicly announced a partnership with Squanch Games.

Like The Quarry, there’s currently no indication that there are any plans to bring “High on Life” to Stadia, and all parties involved remained silent on the game’s roots in Stadia.

9to5Google’s Take

This story just serves as another example of Google’s mistakes with Stadia – the platform has killer tech behind it, and could have done tremendously well. But Google didn’t properly set expectations which led to a rocky launch and, ultimately, Google not giving Stadia enough time to truly flourish.

With so much more competition in cloud gaming now, and so much weight behind the idea at Microsoft especially, it’s getting harder and harder to see Stadia itself really even fulfilling its promises, or even delivering on games that were once supposed to arrive. It brings to mind the situation around Tchia, which was announced as a Stadia exclusive, but was abandoned after the closure of SG&E, and has since moved to PlayStation.

Google’s attention has certainly been diverted elsewhere.