Google Launches One Final Stadia Game Before Shutdown

As a final goodbye, Google launched one last Stadia game ahead of the service’s end on January 18. Called Worm Game, the title was used by the Stadia team to internally test the cloud streaming service.

“‘Worm Game’ is a humble title we used to test many of Stadia’s features, starting well before our 2019 public launch, right through 2022,” said Google. “It won’t win Game of the Year, but the Stadia team spent a LOT of time playing it, and we thought we’d share it with you. Thanks for playing, and for everything.”

As the name implies, Worm Game is a game where players control a worm and the objective is to eat the fruit on screen. The Worm becomes bigger when more fruit is eaten. It’s basically the retro game Snake, but with some extra modes and different levels.

Back in September 2022, Google announced that it would shut down Stadia. Any Stadia purchases, hardware and software, would be refunded to all players. Google cited Stadia’s inability to “gain traction with users” as the primary reason for the closure.

While Stadia is winding down, there are still companies piloting cloud streaming services–like Amazon’s Luna and Xbox’s cloud streaming service.

As for Stadia refunds, by January 18, most refunds should be processed. People who had an active Stadia Pro subscription as of September 29 will not be charged for accessing their library until the shut down date–which means players have five more days, as of January 13, to give their Stadia library one last browse.