Terraria developer Andrew Spinks took to Twitter today to condemn Google for locking him out of his account seemingly for no reason, leaving him unable to access his YouTube account, Google Drive data or Gmail inbox. In his four-tweet thread, Spinks insisted that he had done nothing to constitute a violation of the Google Terms of Service and announced in dramatic fashion that in response to this "burned bridge," he was canceling plans to bring Terraria to Google Stadia.
The news comes almost two weeks after the official Terraria Twitter account reached out to Team YouTube after noticing that its account had been disabled following an apparently erroneous claim of a ToS violation. Although the channel was still public, with their previous videos intact, the team had no way of accessing the account any more. What followed was a painfully generic and public experience with YouTube online customer support, which seemed to have difficulty understanding exactly what the issue was, before the discussion seemed to peter out.
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Things came to a head this morning when Spinks, on his own personal Twitter account, railed against Google for locking him out of his account "for over 3 weeks." Claiming that he had used every available resource to no avail, the developer finally announced that, in retribution for the poor experience with the company, he was canceling the release of Terraria for Google Stadia. His parting words left little doubt as to his feelings on the matter: "I will not be involved with a corporation that values their customers and partners so little. Doing business with you is a liability."
This news will come as a blow to fans who were looking forward to seeing the inventive action-adventure craft-em-up on Google's cloud-gaming service. Terraria enjoys a legion of dedicated followers across multiple platforms who, even a decade after its initial release, have been able to dig in to impressive content expansions, including last year's purported final ever update, "Journey's End".
The announcement may also make Stadia fans a little nervous. After its recent announcement to shut down all its first-party development for Stadia, Google seemed keen to continue and expand its work with third-party developers and publishers, so a public castigation from the developer of one of the most beloved indie titles on the market is likely to raise eyebrows. Third-party releases on Stadia like Cyberpunk 2077 and Red Dead Redemption 2 have provided some of the best showcases of the system's capabilities, and with first-party development shut down, some have suggested that Google should be doing more to keep developers, even small ones, in the fold.
The cancelation of Terraria for Stadia is unlikely to bring the behemoth down on its own, to be sure. However, with competing services like GeForce NOW and Xbox Game Pass gaining momentum in the cloud-gaming sphere, Google should perhaps consider treading a little more carefully in the future.
Terraria is available for Mobile, PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One - but not Google Stadia.