Google Stadia won’t offer third-party exclusives

Third-party games featuring on Google’s new streaming service will not be exclusive to the new platform. In an interview with PCGamesN at GDC, the company’s vice president, Phil Harrison, made clear that Stadia won’t be following the precedent set by the Epic Games store.

Harrison said that “we don’t require that games be exclusive to our platform, so some games will appear on multiple platforms, as is expected.” That is, of course, in direct contrast with the other new kid on the block – Epic has claimed a suite of timed exclusives in recent months, including Metro Exodus, The Division 2, and the upcoming release of The Outer Worlds.

Harrison makes clear, however, that games that Google develops itself won’t be available elsewhere after release, saying that “the games we build ourselves with Stadia Games and Entertainment will only be available on our platform.” On PC, at least, that’s no great surprise – with the exception of Ubisoft, there are few major publishers in possession of a launcher who are sharing their games with other distributors.

At the moment, we don’t really know what games Google is planning to bring to Stadia. A handful of teasers ahead of the company’s keynote speech offered a few cryptic clues suggesting partnerships with Bethesda, Rockstar, and EA, but we’re not likely to learn more about the initial line-up until the summer.

We do, however, know that Ubisoft has already worked with Google – thanks to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s involvement with Project Stream. On top of that, Assassin’s Creed series creator Jade Raymond took to the stage to announce that she would be heading up Google’s new first-party games studio. Again, we don’t know what Raymond and her team are working on, but hopefully we’ll learn more at E3.