Google Stadia Now Free To Anyone With a Gmail Address (polygon.com) 68
Google's video game streaming platform, Stadia, is now free to anyone with a Gmail address, the company announced on Wednesday. To sweeten the deal, Google is also giving new users two months of Stadia Pro -- including access to nine games -- for free. From a report: Existing Stadia Pro subscribers won't be charged for the next two months of the service, Google said. Previously, access to Stadia required purchasing the $129 Google Stadia Premiere Edition, a bundle that includes a Chromecast Ultra, a wireless Stadia Controller, and three months of Stadia Pro, the service that offered free games and video streams up to 4K resolution and 60 frames per second with HDR lighting.
Not exactly. I don't really have a choicd right no (Score:2)
Don't call me stupid for not being able to change things that are beyond my control.
There is no such thing as a free e-mail adress. Either it has ads or it costs money. I can't afford the latter. Not even 50 cent a month. (Frankly, it would have to *give* me $30 a month to even get to net zero.) ... let's s
Don't ask why. It's complicated. Fact is: I fight hard every day. Fighting harder turns out to only break me more, making it worse afterwards. So don't even try to blame me, unless you walked a mile in my
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Let's assume that you will survive [youtube.com].
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I probably have a different issue than @BAReFO0t, but I understand the sentiment. I don't know his/her situation, but I know, even if I wanted to do a donation drive of some sort, it isn't an option because if people were to send me money, it would likely screw up my disability and medical benefits and if were lose them, for almost any reason, it will likely take years to get them back, if in my remaining lifetime at all.
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As I've said here before many times: outlook.com doesn't suck.
Microsoft may have the desire to be as evil as Google, but they simply don't have the competence these days. I'm quite confident in their lack of ability to do anything too disturbing with the data they harvest from my email accounts, and the graphic design of their web client is much less screwed up than gmail is these days. I mean, it's not great, this is Microsoft after all, but it doesn't suck.
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Yeah don't feel too bad, his whole 'nobody with even a whit of common sense uses a gmail address'
Is complete BS.
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Oh no! Google can read your email which is sent in the clear like a postcard and is handled by how many hops between sender and receiver? Being able to control the spam filters et al might be nice, but don't kid yourself that google isn't still reading a lot of your mail.
That would be zero. If it's not sent with tls, it's going to spam. If you send in plaintext to gmail, even with a correct spf and dkim signature, that mail is going to be filtered to spam. Everything sent out from gmal will use tls.
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Most people send mail through Gmail by using their web interface. It's not going over the internet as plaintext; Gmail forces HTTPS. But it IS plaintext so far as Google is concerned and they can easily read it. The same is true for anything that is sent to a Gmail address. The only exception would be email that is encrypted with an end to end solution such as GPG.
Google also does email hosting for companies and organizations. Those accounts don't have gmail dot com addresses, but Google still has access to
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Bad reporting. People don't know you can have a Google account without a Gmail address.
Re: Fake news. Not free. (Score:1)
Humorless triggered Slashdot. (Score:1)
Really?? The sarcasm isn't obvious to you? ... Guys??
Come on, I thought it was funny. :)
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ahh the scammers version of "free" (Score:3, Informative)
Free only for users with a credit card (so no kids) and a gmail address for a limited trial period then they bill you $10 a month, and good luck cancelling.
"something went wrong, please try again later"
Re:ahh the scammers version of "free" (Score:4, Informative)
It isn't free, it's a free trial. No controllers being given away, still have to buy the games. In other words, it is the bare minimum they should have offered months ago. This isn't news.
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I meant to precede my post with "Yes, Exactly." Kind of reads like I'm arguing with parent.
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So update the goddamn headline then.
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Re:ahh the scammers version of "free" (Score:5, Informative)
Don't need a credit card. Just download the app and click "I don't have a code". Then click "no" when it asks if you want the free 2 month trial.
Boom. Free account, accessible right now.
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We can't use our computers' web browsers? :(
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Also worth noting: Stadia doesn't come with access to games unless you buy them separately or subscribe at the Pro level. Of course, this two-month free trial actually is for Stadia Pro, so you'll have "free" access to all sorts of great titles included with Stadia Pro, like...uhh...here's the full list:
- Destiny 2
- Grid
- Gylt
- Serious Sam Collection
- Spitlings
- Stacks on Stacks
- SteamWorld Dig 2
- SteamWorld Quest
- Thumper
OH good, the thing I didn't care about is free now (Score:1)
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but anything that this would be used for is better used for nVidia Now, which lets you own the game, too.
Stadia lets you buy games outright too, and unlike geforce now you don't have to pay a monthly fee or be limited to 1 hour play time with a 20 minute queue to get in.
Final hail mary before it is inevitably cancelled (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds exactly like what Google product management is going to do to drum up interest as a hail mary, to try and drump up interest in the product, as it's failing, right before they cancel it.
Why even go through the effort of signing up at this point, when it's going to get cancelled in a few weeks? Even learning to navigate the UI is a waste of time at this point.
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Indeed. My take as well.
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This sounds exactly like what Google product management is going to do to drum up interest as a hail mary, to try and drump up interest in the product, as it's failing, right before they cancel it.
It's exactly how they said it would be rolled out when they announced it a year ago.
First founders, then later the free tier.
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It's exactly how they said it would be rolled out when they announced it a year ago.
First founders, then later the free tier.
No, it isn't how they said it'd be. This is a free trial of the Stadia Pro tier, after which you'll be charged the usual $10/month. That's not even close to being the same thing as the free tier.
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The free trial is optional. If you choose No, you get the Free tier just as promised.
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For anyone interested or wanting to try out streamed games, I'd highly suggest waiting on Microsoft xCloud to go public.
I've been in their public preview (aka pre-beta) and signed up to see just how bad the expected lag and latency would feel. I was shocked and blown away by just how well it actually works.
Even went out of my way to try and lag things and couldn't.
I figured mortal combat would be a great input lag test, yet won my first few matches, and only ended up losing due to my natural suckage at fig
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Yes, I signed up for xCloud to try out streaming, expecting it would suck. The first day, it did suck, but not in the way I expected since the lag was there but oddly not. The second day and after that, it was remarkable just how fluid it worked - and I'm not on a low latency connection - have cable (50ms typical RTT) and wifi and all that, and it was like playing locally. (And at 50ms latency, you can detect when things like camera are lagging).
I don't know what the technology behind it is, but things like
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On one hand it's hard to do worse than Google did, monthly subscription + full price games.
The google model isn't monthly subscription + full price games its monthly subscription for 4k/5.1/hdr, a selection of free games every month (just like microsofts business model with xbox games with gold) and discounts. Or just the games outright (buying them with the subscription discount counts for this) and don't pay monthly, you get 1080p and stereo sound without paying monthly.
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In my stadia home account, most games have a price tag $60 and up.
I don't see any options on getting free games, and they seem to have removed the $10 subscription signup from the store front.
I think it's fair enough to say that if Google doesn't care to keep up with offering what they claim they offer, they shouldn't care if I can't either.
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In my stadia home account, most games have a price tag $60 and up.
So the normal price for games?
I don't see any options on getting free games, and they seem to have removed the $10 subscription signup from the store front.
Pro is still there, and it still comes with 9 games right now, more coming next month...
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yep instead you pay for each game, approximately the equivalent of a years sub to something like Xbox.
So... exactly the same as xbox... either buy each game at the same price microsoft charges for them on xbox or pay for a subscription fee at the same price as xbox.... the only difference is the subscription fee is mandatory for online games for xbox.
Free? (Score:2)
Oh God, not another fake "free" thing where the real thing you want is the "Premium" version. It's like free parking outside the football stadium.
Games are full price. (Score:2)
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It's quite different than Steam because you don't need any hardware to run it, everything is streamed so it can run with only a Chromecast, or your phone. As far as I know, Steam has no such offering nor any plan to have one.
Steam Remote Play requires you to have a gaming PC and thus it is already very limited who it will appeal to.
Stadia of course has their own issues. The idea that I have to pay a monthly fee *AND* buy the games is ridiculous. They should have adopted a PS Now model where you simply pay t
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The idea that I have to pay a monthly fee *AND* buy the games is ridiculous.
I guess its a good thing you don't have to pay the monthly fee, or if you're fine with just the included games you don't have to buy any games? It's more like xbox games with gold than ps now though.
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Games with gold are not streamed, they are played on your xbox.
PS Now is streamed, you can play it on anything.
Seems closer to PS Now to me.
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Games with gold are not streamed, they are played on your xbox.
Pricing and functionality are closer to games with gold.
Might be the future of game dev too (Score:1)
So I didn't really have any hope for Stadia, and when I found out my project was going to be released for it, I paid it no mind. But I've tried it out from home, and I think there's honestly a good argument to be made for it when doing remote game dev. I don't have to worry about USB forwarding through Remote Desktop or (ugh) Citrix. The frame rate is good. I can play through Chrome, which means it works on Macs and PCs. I can Remote Desktop to my computer at work to edit code and debug (to the Stadia insta
How to actually sign up? (Score:2)
It's unclear to me how you actually get this free account. At stadia.com the only option is to buy the Premiere edition. In the app it says iether enter an invite code or buy a package. Maybe I'm dense but how do you get a free account?
Re: How to actually sign up? (Score:3)
Stadia seems to be in trouble.... (Score:2)
Not that surprising, the idea was not that good in the first place. Putting an office suite in the cloud is a bit different than putting real-time games there.
How is it versus Nvidia GeForce Now? (Score:2)
I don't have, or want to buy, a gaming rig. I read the Ars review [arstechnica.com] and concluded that, if I were to get one of these services it would probably be Nvidia's. Has anyone (besides Ars) tried both?
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I have. Both ran well on my modest connection and hardware (literally a 6 year old chromebook that was $150 new). I probably wouldn't play unreal tournament on it, but for single player role playing or adventure games, racing games, open world, and indie style games it seems to work pretty well.
I preferred NVIDIA when they were in beta and just about every game in your steam account would work just fine. Now it seems like 1 in 20 games is allowed to be played. NVIDIA by rights should tell the game distrib
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NVIDIA by rights should tell the game distributers to piss up a rope
How'd that work out for mp3.com and aereo?
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Yea, but stupid copyright lawyers behave like: "What!? What do you mean the consumer can play our precious piece of DRM'd crap that they paid full price for, ONLINE! NOOOOO!!!! Stupid fucking goat fuckers.
controllers aren't very good (Score:1)
I have a Premier Edition setup and stopped using it. The controllers are just not very good. I mean, they're better than the ones Amazon offers for their FireTV units but that's a pretty low bar. That and I'd encountered more than a few bandwidth related hiccups, this even when using it during likely off-hours (gaming-wise) on a wired network connection with a FIOS uplink.
Don't know that 'free' will help get over those hurdles.
Google Cancels Stadia... (Score:1)
Half measure (Score:1)
Its free, and I still don't want it. (Score:1)
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If you're opposed to subscription model then stadia is probably the model for you.
Buy the games you want, and unlike xbox and playstation you don't need to pay for things like online play. No subscription fee needed.
The subscription is to get access to their "free" games and 4k video.
And in 6 months they'll kill it. (Score:2)
Not that many users can use it! [no android tvs!] (Score:2)
Based on what I've read the service is currently only available if you have the chromecast ultra stick or certain pixel devices.
Have an android tv? Not an option.
Have a 1080p chromecast stick? Not an option.
So... not exactly giving it away to anyone with a gmail address...
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Works in the browser on any phone, and works on any computer. android tv is on its way.
'Free' (Score:2)
But you need a Gmail address. So they figure your soul is worth nothing.
False subject line (Score:1)
It's not available to anyone with a gmail or google email address. You have to live in one of the countries where it's available.
List of available countries (Score:3)
Yep, if you're not in one of [google.com] Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States (except Hawaii), you're out of luck.
i hope stadia doesn't fail/get cancelled (Score:2)
sure feels like it, reads like a desperate move, but the failure of stadia will reflect on linux as well.
headlines will read;
Linux gaming, not even Google could make it into a success.
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I agree with that, not interested in it either.
was just thinking about the side-consequences of stadia's failure and the how the 'tech press' always spins these things.