Last year, Google announced that it will be winding down its Stadia service on January 18, 2023. This left many questions in its wake, including what will happen to the Stadia controller, which was tied to the service.
Google has now announced that it will be releasing a self-serve tool that will allow customers to enable Bluetooth on the Stadia controller. This was a dormant feature of the controller that was disabled in firmware.
We’ve also got Bluetooth news: next week we’ll be releasing a self-serve tool to enable Bluetooth connections on your Stadia Controller.
We’ll share details here on release. pic.twitter.com/6vYomngfmA
— Stadia ☁️🎮 (@GoogleStadia) January 13, 2023
Once enabled, the Stadia controller can then be used as a standard Bluetooth controller with other devices. This is something that cannot be done presently as the Stadia controller was meant to connect and work directly with the Stadia cloud service. The update should allow Stadia customers to keep using the controller with other devices instead of it becoming useless after January 18.
Google also released one final game — Worm Game — to Stadia players before the service shuts down next Wednesday. This was a game that has been in use internally for years and was used by the team to test Stadia’s features. It’s an intentionally no-frills, minimal title that likely would have never seen the light of day had the service not shut down but is a cool Easter egg in a way to experience the game that was used to test and build the service.
