While some of Google Stadia's critics might say that it was inevitable, the announcement that Google was shutting down its first-party studios and no longer making its own games for the cloud service was still quite a shock, especially since it only launched near the tail-end of 2019. Now it turns out that not even the people working at those studios were aware of the closures until the general public was informed.

According to four unnamed sources who approached Kotaku, developers weren't told about the closures until February 1, via an internal email and conference call with Google's general manager Phil Harrison. Mass layoffs were announced only a few days later. What made the news especially shocking was that Harrison had been praising development only a week beforehand, saying that he was proud of the progress made despite the difficulties faced throughout 2020 (i.e. the coronavirus pandemic).

RELATED: Stadia Exclusive Games That Deserve A Second Chance on Other Platforms

Developers were able to express their confusion to Harrison during a second conference call on February 4th, which was then followed by a Q&A session where Harrison was confronted with his prior statements. According to the sources, Harrison expressed regret over the misleading statements and admitted that nothing had changed in the interim, which suggests that Google had already decided to close the studios by that point.

There's obviously no transcript for the Q&A nor are there any exact comments, but the sources say that it wasn't pretty and that it was an attempt to get some accountability from Stadia management and to learn the truth behind the decisions and Stadia's actual progress. Said attempt was apparently unsuccessful, with the exact reasons for the closure still something of a mystery, though Harrison has pointed to things like the pandemic and the rising costs of game development being contributing factors.

This by no means the death knell for Stadia. Google may not be making games anymore but other studios can still launch their games for the service (Google even recently confirmed that at least 100 more are due out this year), but it's not a good look regardless. If anything, this seemingly gross mismanagement has likely only bolstered Stadia's naysayers and given its defenders pause for thought.

It only reinforces a belief that Google was expecting Stadia to be an immediate success and wasn't willing to put the work in, something Amazon has also been facing criticism for. Amazon appears to eager to break into the gaming market, with its own games and Luna cloud service, but it's already canceled several projects and its MMO title New World has been recently hit with a big delay.

MORE: Amazon Abandoning Crucible Bodes Ill for New World

Source: Kotaku