Farewell Stadia

danno8

Google will wind down Stadia come January 2023.

https://blog.google/products/stadia/message-on-stadia-streaming-strategy/

zaria

https://killedbygoogle.com/ +1
RIP

Dragonredux

Good riddance

tmbrinks

Does this mean we'll be able to have timely bug-fix patches for PC? Since the "2-week Stadia certification time" can't be used as an excuse anymore?

Necrotech_Master

tmbrinks wrote: »

Does this mean we'll be able to have timely bug-fix patches for PC? Since the "2-week Stadia certification time" can't be used as an excuse anymore?

that would be an interesting change of pace lol

maybe it would also give them the ability to move away from this quarterly release schedule, and allow PTS to go longer if they are doing major overhauls to core functionality lol, or at least more time to fix bugs and polish it than rushing it out

TechMaybeHic

tmbrinks wrote: »

Does this mean we'll be able to have timely bug-fix patches for PC? Since the "2-week Stadia certification time" can't be used as an excuse anymore?

Or move some assets back client side?

Jamie_Aubrey

Used it once, was a laggy mess

kargen27

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Does this mean we'll be able to have timely bug-fix patches for PC? Since the "2-week Stadia certification time" can't be used as an excuse anymore?

Or move some assets back client side?

What assets were moved server side because of Stadia?

alternatelder

Don't tell me anyone is surprised Google shut down yet another project.

TechMaybeHic

Jamie_Aubrey wrote: »

Used it once, was a laggy mess

Was capped at 30 FPS, and no add-ons so even console is better.

kargen27 wrote: »

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Does this mean we'll be able to have timely bug-fix patches for PC? Since the "2-week Stadia certification time" can't be used as an excuse anymore?

Or move some assets back client side?

What assets were moved server side because of Stadia?

The patch when Stadia was added, they reduced the client side by like 2/3 the size moving to the server. They did not say it was for Stadia. Just claimed it was to just make for smaller client and patches. But 2 and 2 together...

Either way; massive position desyncs and performance got much worse then. And it was awful until PCNA server upgrades so..kind of tells me servers got overloaded

gronoxvx

Stadia failing.... didnt see that coming. 🤣. Zos still wont make any changes to the cycle since it gives them breathing room to work with.

thedocbwarren

Do they move it to XBox Live now since they will not have a streaming service? I game on Mac, Windows and Linux through client and Stadia and it was indeed nice to use it on my beater Dell laptop when I'm out of town. When Geforce Now had ESO it was amazing.

danno8

alternatelder wrote: »

Don't tell me anyone is surprised Google shut down yet another project.

I'm not.

Of all the game streaming services Stadia always seemed like the worst option since you had to buy the games from their store, couldn't play any of your currently owned games using their hardware and if you wanted to give up the service you were forced to also give up all the content you purchased with it.

I am frankly very surprised that they are refunding all hardware and software purchases made through their Play or Stadia store.

ghost_bg_ESO

danno8 wrote: »

alternatelder wrote: »

Don't tell me anyone is surprised Google shut down yet another project.

I'm not.

Of all the game streaming services Stadia always seemed like the worst option since you had to buy the games from their store, couldn't play any of your currently owned games using their hardware and if you wanted to give up the service you were forced to also give up all the content you purchased with it.

I am frankly very surprised that they are refunding all hardware and software purchases made through their Play or Stadia store.

will see how this refunds will go... as users were beta testers, and it is only stadia for end users that is discontinued, but not the technology itself.

the1andonlyskwex

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Does this mean we'll be able to have timely bug-fix patches for PC? Since the "2-week Stadia certification time" can't be used as an excuse anymore?

Or move some assets back client side?

What assets were moved server side because of Stadia?

The patch when Stadia was added, they reduced the client side by like 2/3 the size moving to the server. They did not say it was for Stadia. Just claimed it was to just make for smaller client and patches. But 2 and 2 together...

Either way; massive position desyncs and performance got much worse then. And it was awful until PCNA server upgrades so..kind of tells me servers got overloaded

Blaming Stadia is a baseless conspiracy theory peddled by people who don't understand how Stadia works. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux PC with power comparable to a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X.

Also, reducing client size has a lot more to do with optimizing art assets than it does with moving computations around.

the1andonlyskwex

danno8 wrote: »

alternatelder wrote: »

Don't tell me anyone is surprised Google shut down yet another project.

I'm not.

Of all the game streaming services Stadia always seemed like the worst option since you had to buy the games from their store, couldn't play any of your currently owned games using their hardware and if you wanted to give up the service you were forced to also give up all the content you purchased with it.

I am frankly very surprised that they are refunding all hardware and software purchases made through their Play or Stadia store.

The beauty of Stadia that almost nobody appreciated (largely because of terrible marketing) was that it didn't have any mandatory subscription costs, or any significant hardware costs. Someone who just wanted to play Destiny or Madden online could play indefinitely (or at least until January 2023) for nothing more than the initial $60 cost of the game.

Unfortunately, Google's marketing totally bungled things so that casual gamers (who Stadia was great for) never heard about it, and hardcore gamers (who wanted "Netflix for games") were left feeling disappointed (or even misled) by inaccurate expectations.

xgoku1

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Blaming Stadia is a baseless conspiracy theory peddled by people who don't understand how Stadia works. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux PC with power comparable to a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X.

Also, reducing client size has a lot more to do with optimizing art assets than it does with moving computations around.

ZOS decide to match the PC incremental patch cadence to match with Stadia's, which means necessary PC patches which went through without red tape before, now had to be approved by Stadia certification. Weekly maintenance became bi-weekly maintenance.

As mentioned here

moving forward, subsequent incremental patches will occur every other week. If an emergency arises, we’ll of course work with Stadia to get a patch published ASAP. So in general, PC incrementals will now occur bi-weekly, but if needed, we can update quickly.

the1andonlyskwex

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Blaming Stadia is a baseless conspiracy theory peddled by people who don't understand how Stadia works. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux PC with power comparable to a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X.

Also, reducing client size has a lot more to do with optimizing art assets than it does with moving computations around.

ZOS decide to match the PC incremental patch cadence to match with Stadia's, which means necessary PC patches which went through without red tape before, now had to be approved by Stadia certification.

As mentioned here

moving forward, subsequent incremental patches will occur every other week. If an emergency arises, we’ll of course work with Stadia to get a patch published ASAP. So in general, PC incrementals will now occur bi-weekly, but if needed, we can update quickly.

I was talking about ZOS allegedly moving calculations / assets to the server because of Stadia. I agree that the change in patch cadence was caused by Stadia certification/review requirements.

xgoku1

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Blaming Stadia is a baseless conspiracy theory peddled by people who don't understand how Stadia works. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux PC with power comparable to a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X.

Also, reducing client size has a lot more to do with optimizing art assets than it does with moving computations around.

ZOS decide to match the PC incremental patch cadence to match with Stadia's, which means necessary PC patches which went through without red tape before, now had to be approved by Stadia certification.

As mentioned here

moving forward, subsequent incremental patches will occur every other week. If an emergency arises, we’ll of course work with Stadia to get a patch published ASAP. So in general, PC incrementals will now occur bi-weekly, but if needed, we can update quickly.

I was talking about ZOS allegedly moving calculations / assets to the server because of Stadia. I agree that the change in patch cadence was caused by Stadia certification/review requirements.

I've seen that floating around in the forums since U25 dropped, like this one

Hard to say as ZOS says that the client resizing was to remove redundant datafiles.

And why wouldn't it make sense for how Stadia works? Stadia is a PC running on a Google farm, yes? Wouldn't reducing the client size by moving assets/calculations to server reduce storage space needed/server load and costs for Google? The client size reduced by ~15GB after U25, that seems pretty substantial (Not saying it's true)

Like, pre U25 ESO client would need 80GB per Stadia player, vs. 66GB per Stadia player post U25

rpa

Google tends to kill services which are not massive success. Or worse, purchase and devour some nice niche service and then kill it.

the1andonlyskwex

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Blaming Stadia is a baseless conspiracy theory peddled by people who don't understand how Stadia works. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux PC with power comparable to a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X.

Also, reducing client size has a lot more to do with optimizing art assets than it does with moving computations around.

ZOS decide to match the PC incremental patch cadence to match with Stadia's, which means necessary PC patches which went through without red tape before, now had to be approved by Stadia certification.

As mentioned here

moving forward, subsequent incremental patches will occur every other week. If an emergency arises, we’ll of course work with Stadia to get a patch published ASAP. So in general, PC incrementals will now occur bi-weekly, but if needed, we can update quickly.

I was talking about ZOS allegedly moving calculations / assets to the server because of Stadia. I agree that the change in patch cadence was caused by Stadia certification/review requirements.

I've seen that floating around in the forums since U25 dropped, like this one

Hard to say as ZOS says that the client resizing was to remove redundant datafiles.

And why wouldn't it make sense for how Stadia works? Stadia is a PC running on a Google farm, yes? Wouldn't reducing the client size by moving assets/calculations to server reduce storage space needed/server load and costs for Google? The client size reduced by ~15GB after U25, that seems pretty substantial (Not saying it's true)

Like, pre U25 ESO client would need 80GB per Stadia player, vs. 66GB per Stadia player post U25

Where do I start?
1) Reducing client size has nothing to do with moving calculations to the server. Client size is driven by graphics and sound, neither of which are handled on the ESO servers because ZOS doesn't want to waste bandwidth streaming that stuff. The reduction in size was almost certainly due to removal of redundant assets and/or changes in texture compression, neither of which have any impact on the server.
2) Stadia is the least size-limited platform there is because it can use one copy of the game for multiple users/clients. This was even part of their marketing because it enabled some Stadia-exclusive features in other games.
3) This thread is literally the first time I've ever seen anyone try to link the client size changes to server performance. Usually claims about Stadia causing server overload revolve around misconceptions that the ESO servers are the Stadia client, or that Google's Stadia servers are too slow to run a normal game client. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux client, and it's about as powerful as a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X (while the old ESO client ran fine on much weaker hardware like the base PS4 and Xbox One).

xgoku1

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Blaming Stadia is a baseless conspiracy theory peddled by people who don't understand how Stadia works. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux PC with power comparable to a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X.

Also, reducing client size has a lot more to do with optimizing art assets than it does with moving computations around.

ZOS decide to match the PC incremental patch cadence to match with Stadia's, which means necessary PC patches which went through without red tape before, now had to be approved by Stadia certification.

As mentioned here

moving forward, subsequent incremental patches will occur every other week. If an emergency arises, we’ll of course work with Stadia to get a patch published ASAP. So in general, PC incrementals will now occur bi-weekly, but if needed, we can update quickly.

I was talking about ZOS allegedly moving calculations / assets to the server because of Stadia. I agree that the change in patch cadence was caused by Stadia certification/review requirements.

I've seen that floating around in the forums since U25 dropped, like this one

Hard to say as ZOS says that the client resizing was to remove redundant datafiles.

And why wouldn't it make sense for how Stadia works? Stadia is a PC running on a Google farm, yes? Wouldn't reducing the client size by moving assets/calculations to server reduce storage space needed/server load and costs for Google? The client size reduced by ~15GB after U25, that seems pretty substantial (Not saying it's true)

Like, pre U25 ESO client would need 80GB per Stadia player, vs. 66GB per Stadia player post U25

Where do I start?
1) Reducing client size has nothing to do with moving calculations to the server. Client size is driven by graphics and sound, neither of which are handled on the ESO servers because ZOS doesn't want to waste bandwidth streaming that stuff. The reduction in size was almost certainly due to removal of redundant assets and/or changes in texture compression, neither of which have any impact on the server.
2) Stadia is the least size-limited platform there is because it can use one copy of the game for multiple users/clients. This was even part of their marketing because it enabled some Stadia-exclusive features in other games.
3) This thread is literally the first time I've ever seen anyone try to link the client size changes to server performance. Usually claims about Stadia causing server overload revolve around misconceptions that the ESO servers are the Stadia client, or that Google's Stadia servers are too slow to run a normal game client. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux client, and it's about as powerful as a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X (while the old ESO client ran fine on much weaker hardware like the base PS4 and Xbox One).

2. You're saying multiple players can play using the same installed client in Stadia? That seems highly unlikely. Do you have any source for that? Like the entire Stadia playerbase is running off a 66GB ESO client? Or 5 players per client? Do they download a new client when the 6th player purchases ESO?

3. Not really, it's been discussed a lot before. I even found a previous comment from you on a thread from Feb 2021 while googling

TechMaybeHic

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Does this mean we'll be able to have timely bug-fix patches for PC? Since the "2-week Stadia certification time" can't be used as an excuse anymore?

Or move some assets back client side?

What assets were moved server side because of Stadia?

The patch when Stadia was added, they reduced the client side by like 2/3 the size moving to the server. They did not say it was for Stadia. Just claimed it was to just make for smaller client and patches. But 2 and 2 together...

Either way; massive position desyncs and performance got much worse then. And it was awful until PCNA server upgrades so..kind of tells me servers got overloaded

Blaming Stadia is a baseless conspiracy theory peddled by people who don't understand how Stadia works. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux PC with power comparable to a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X.

Also, reducing client size has a lot more to do with optimizing art assets than it does with moving computations around.

I don't think it's baseless. They shrunk the client, the degraded performance was obvious as well as acknowledged by the Devs scrambling to resolve it after the patch and refusing to roll back, then Stadia launched. Then we get new servers PCNA and performance gets a lot better. Seems to be some observable events. They clearly did something. Whether it was for Stadia for sure; that I can't say. Just seems like a lot of coincidence

the1andonlyskwex

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Blaming Stadia is a baseless conspiracy theory peddled by people who don't understand how Stadia works. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux PC with power comparable to a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X.

Also, reducing client size has a lot more to do with optimizing art assets than it does with moving computations around.

ZOS decide to match the PC incremental patch cadence to match with Stadia's, which means necessary PC patches which went through without red tape before, now had to be approved by Stadia certification.

As mentioned here

moving forward, subsequent incremental patches will occur every other week. If an emergency arises, we’ll of course work with Stadia to get a patch published ASAP. So in general, PC incrementals will now occur bi-weekly, but if needed, we can update quickly.

I was talking about ZOS allegedly moving calculations / assets to the server because of Stadia. I agree that the change in patch cadence was caused by Stadia certification/review requirements.

I've seen that floating around in the forums since U25 dropped, like this one

Hard to say as ZOS says that the client resizing was to remove redundant datafiles.

And why wouldn't it make sense for how Stadia works? Stadia is a PC running on a Google farm, yes? Wouldn't reducing the client size by moving assets/calculations to server reduce storage space needed/server load and costs for Google? The client size reduced by ~15GB after U25, that seems pretty substantial (Not saying it's true)

Like, pre U25 ESO client would need 80GB per Stadia player, vs. 66GB per Stadia player post U25

Where do I start?
1) Reducing client size has nothing to do with moving calculations to the server. Client size is driven by graphics and sound, neither of which are handled on the ESO servers because ZOS doesn't want to waste bandwidth streaming that stuff. The reduction in size was almost certainly due to removal of redundant assets and/or changes in texture compression, neither of which have any impact on the server.
2) Stadia is the least size-limited platform there is because it can use one copy of the game for multiple users/clients. This was even part of their marketing because it enabled some Stadia-exclusive features in other games.
3) This thread is literally the first time I've ever seen anyone try to link the client size changes to server performance. Usually claims about Stadia causing server overload revolve around misconceptions that the ESO servers are the Stadia client, or that Google's Stadia servers are too slow to run a normal game client. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux client, and it's about as powerful as a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X (while the old ESO client ran fine on much weaker hardware like the base PS4 and Xbox One).

2. You're saying multiple players can play using the same installed client in Stadia? That seems highly unlikely. Do you have any source for that? Like the entire Stadia playerbase is running off a 66GB ESO client? Or 5 players per client?

3. Not really, it's been discussed a lot before. I even found a previous comment from you on a thread from Feb 2021 while googling

That other thread is talking about calculations being moved, not about the reduced client size. They're totally unrelated, and neither has anything to do with Stadia.

As for multiple clients running off of one copy of the game, this article touches on it a little bit: https://dzone.com/articles/a-first-look-at-google-stadia
The short version is that Stadia clients live in Google data centers and just access the shared data center storage. It may seem weird if your only experience with computing is a home environment, but it's a lot faster and more efficient to have one super-fast (and super expensive) storage device that everyone on the network can access than it is for everyone to have their own (relatively slow) local copies of everything. Most likely there's one copy of each game client in each data center (to keep latency down), but there definitely isn't any need for every client to have it's own copy of every game.

xgoku1

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Blaming Stadia is a baseless conspiracy theory peddled by people who don't understand how Stadia works. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux PC with power comparable to a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X.

Also, reducing client size has a lot more to do with optimizing art assets than it does with moving computations around.

ZOS decide to match the PC incremental patch cadence to match with Stadia's, which means necessary PC patches which went through without red tape before, now had to be approved by Stadia certification.

As mentioned here

moving forward, subsequent incremental patches will occur every other week. If an emergency arises, we’ll of course work with Stadia to get a patch published ASAP. So in general, PC incrementals will now occur bi-weekly, but if needed, we can update quickly.

I was talking about ZOS allegedly moving calculations / assets to the server because of Stadia. I agree that the change in patch cadence was caused by Stadia certification/review requirements.

I've seen that floating around in the forums since U25 dropped, like this one

Hard to say as ZOS says that the client resizing was to remove redundant datafiles.

And why wouldn't it make sense for how Stadia works? Stadia is a PC running on a Google farm, yes? Wouldn't reducing the client size by moving assets/calculations to server reduce storage space needed/server load and costs for Google? The client size reduced by ~15GB after U25, that seems pretty substantial (Not saying it's true)

Like, pre U25 ESO client would need 80GB per Stadia player, vs. 66GB per Stadia player post U25

Where do I start?
1) Reducing client size has nothing to do with moving calculations to the server. Client size is driven by graphics and sound, neither of which are handled on the ESO servers because ZOS doesn't want to waste bandwidth streaming that stuff. The reduction in size was almost certainly due to removal of redundant assets and/or changes in texture compression, neither of which have any impact on the server.
2) Stadia is the least size-limited platform there is because it can use one copy of the game for multiple users/clients. This was even part of their marketing because it enabled some Stadia-exclusive features in other games.
3) This thread is literally the first time I've ever seen anyone try to link the client size changes to server performance. Usually claims about Stadia causing server overload revolve around misconceptions that the ESO servers are the Stadia client, or that Google's Stadia servers are too slow to run a normal game client. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux client, and it's about as powerful as a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X (while the old ESO client ran fine on much weaker hardware like the base PS4 and Xbox One).

2. You're saying multiple players can play using the same installed client in Stadia? That seems highly unlikely. Do you have any source for that? Like the entire Stadia playerbase is running off a 66GB ESO client? Or 5 players per client?

3. Not really, it's been discussed a lot before. I even found a previous comment from you on a thread from Feb 2021 while googling

That other thread is talking about calculations being moved, not about the reduced client size. They're totally unrelated, and neither has anything to do with Stadia.

As for multiple clients running off of one copy of the game, this article touches on it a little bit: https://dzone.com/articles/a-first-look-at-google-stadia
The short version is that Stadia clients live in Google data centers and just access the shared data center storage. It may seem weird if your only experience with computing is a home environment, but it's a lot faster and more efficient to have one super-fast (and super expensive) storage device that everyone on the network can access than it is for everyone to have their own (relatively slow) local copies of everything. Most likely there's one copy of each game client in each data center (to keep latency down), but there definitely isn't any need for every client to have it's own copy of every game.

Where does the article talk about multiple clients running off of one copy of the game?

the1andonlyskwex

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Blaming Stadia is a baseless conspiracy theory peddled by people who don't understand how Stadia works. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux PC with power comparable to a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X.

Also, reducing client size has a lot more to do with optimizing art assets than it does with moving computations around.

ZOS decide to match the PC incremental patch cadence to match with Stadia's, which means necessary PC patches which went through without red tape before, now had to be approved by Stadia certification.

As mentioned here

moving forward, subsequent incremental patches will occur every other week. If an emergency arises, we’ll of course work with Stadia to get a patch published ASAP. So in general, PC incrementals will now occur bi-weekly, but if needed, we can update quickly.

I was talking about ZOS allegedly moving calculations / assets to the server because of Stadia. I agree that the change in patch cadence was caused by Stadia certification/review requirements.

I've seen that floating around in the forums since U25 dropped, like this one

Hard to say as ZOS says that the client resizing was to remove redundant datafiles.

And why wouldn't it make sense for how Stadia works? Stadia is a PC running on a Google farm, yes? Wouldn't reducing the client size by moving assets/calculations to server reduce storage space needed/server load and costs for Google? The client size reduced by ~15GB after U25, that seems pretty substantial (Not saying it's true)

Like, pre U25 ESO client would need 80GB per Stadia player, vs. 66GB per Stadia player post U25

Where do I start?
1) Reducing client size has nothing to do with moving calculations to the server. Client size is driven by graphics and sound, neither of which are handled on the ESO servers because ZOS doesn't want to waste bandwidth streaming that stuff. The reduction in size was almost certainly due to removal of redundant assets and/or changes in texture compression, neither of which have any impact on the server.
2) Stadia is the least size-limited platform there is because it can use one copy of the game for multiple users/clients. This was even part of their marketing because it enabled some Stadia-exclusive features in other games.
3) This thread is literally the first time I've ever seen anyone try to link the client size changes to server performance. Usually claims about Stadia causing server overload revolve around misconceptions that the ESO servers are the Stadia client, or that Google's Stadia servers are too slow to run a normal game client. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux client, and it's about as powerful as a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X (while the old ESO client ran fine on much weaker hardware like the base PS4 and Xbox One).

2. You're saying multiple players can play using the same installed client in Stadia? That seems highly unlikely. Do you have any source for that? Like the entire Stadia playerbase is running off a 66GB ESO client? Or 5 players per client?

3. Not really, it's been discussed a lot before. I even found a previous comment from you on a thread from Feb 2021 while googling

That other thread is talking about calculations being moved, not about the reduced client size. They're totally unrelated, and neither has anything to do with Stadia.

As for multiple clients running off of one copy of the game, this article touches on it a little bit: https://dzone.com/articles/a-first-look-at-google-stadia
The short version is that Stadia clients live in Google data centers and just access the shared data center storage. It may seem weird if your only experience with computing is a home environment, but it's a lot faster and more efficient to have one super-fast (and super expensive) storage device that everyone on the network can access than it is for everyone to have their own (relatively slow) local copies of everything. Most likely there's one copy of each game client in each data center (to keep latency down), but there definitely isn't any need for every client to have it's own copy of every game.

Where does the article talk about multiple clients running off of one copy of the game?

Do you really think each individual client has petabytes of storage? If you understand anything about data centers it's clear that's how it works from the section titled "storage".

Here's another article with a direct quote from a Google VP: https://thegeek.games/2019/03/29/how-could-google-stadia-have-better-games-than-an-ordinary-console/
"If a developer can look at the resources that we can bring to bear on a game they can go orders of magnitude greater in terms of every player inside a world having a persistent memory that lasts over the entire span of the game. You could have tens of thousands of NPCs, all of whom have a complex relationship with each other and with the player – and it’s persistent. That requires a huge amount of local database that you can’t do in a discrete, standalone machine”

He's saying that Stadia allows you to do things that are only possible when you have shared storage that is "local" to every client in the datacenter.

This isn't a particularly outlandish concept. Having applications installed in shared storage is a standard feature of modern computing clusters (as well as old-school mainframe computers).

xgoku1

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Blaming Stadia is a baseless conspiracy theory peddled by people who don't understand how Stadia works. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux PC with power comparable to a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X.

Also, reducing client size has a lot more to do with optimizing art assets than it does with moving computations around.

ZOS decide to match the PC incremental patch cadence to match with Stadia's, which means necessary PC patches which went through without red tape before, now had to be approved by Stadia certification.

As mentioned here

moving forward, subsequent incremental patches will occur every other week. If an emergency arises, we’ll of course work with Stadia to get a patch published ASAP. So in general, PC incrementals will now occur bi-weekly, but if needed, we can update quickly.

I was talking about ZOS allegedly moving calculations / assets to the server because of Stadia. I agree that the change in patch cadence was caused by Stadia certification/review requirements.

I've seen that floating around in the forums since U25 dropped, like this one

Hard to say as ZOS says that the client resizing was to remove redundant datafiles.

And why wouldn't it make sense for how Stadia works? Stadia is a PC running on a Google farm, yes? Wouldn't reducing the client size by moving assets/calculations to server reduce storage space needed/server load and costs for Google? The client size reduced by ~15GB after U25, that seems pretty substantial (Not saying it's true)

Like, pre U25 ESO client would need 80GB per Stadia player, vs. 66GB per Stadia player post U25

Where do I start?
1) Reducing client size has nothing to do with moving calculations to the server. Client size is driven by graphics and sound, neither of which are handled on the ESO servers because ZOS doesn't want to waste bandwidth streaming that stuff. The reduction in size was almost certainly due to removal of redundant assets and/or changes in texture compression, neither of which have any impact on the server.
2) Stadia is the least size-limited platform there is because it can use one copy of the game for multiple users/clients. This was even part of their marketing because it enabled some Stadia-exclusive features in other games.
3) This thread is literally the first time I've ever seen anyone try to link the client size changes to server performance. Usually claims about Stadia causing server overload revolve around misconceptions that the ESO servers are the Stadia client, or that Google's Stadia servers are too slow to run a normal game client. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux client, and it's about as powerful as a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X (while the old ESO client ran fine on much weaker hardware like the base PS4 and Xbox One).

2. You're saying multiple players can play using the same installed client in Stadia? That seems highly unlikely. Do you have any source for that? Like the entire Stadia playerbase is running off a 66GB ESO client? Or 5 players per client?

3. Not really, it's been discussed a lot before. I even found a previous comment from you on a thread from Feb 2021 while googling

That other thread is talking about calculations being moved, not about the reduced client size. They're totally unrelated, and neither has anything to do with Stadia.

As for multiple clients running off of one copy of the game, this article touches on it a little bit: https://dzone.com/articles/a-first-look-at-google-stadia
The short version is that Stadia clients live in Google data centers and just access the shared data center storage. It may seem weird if your only experience with computing is a home environment, but it's a lot faster and more efficient to have one super-fast (and super expensive) storage device that everyone on the network can access than it is for everyone to have their own (relatively slow) local copies of everything. Most likely there's one copy of each game client in each data center (to keep latency down), but there definitely isn't any need for every client to have it's own copy of every game.

Where does the article talk about multiple clients running off of one copy of the game?

Do you really think each individual client has petabytes of storage? If you understand anything about data centers it's clear that's how it works from the section titled "storage".

Here's another article with a direct quote from a Google VP: https://thegeek.games/2019/03/29/how-could-google-stadia-have-better-games-than-an-ordinary-console/
"If a developer can look at the resources that we can bring to bear on a game they can go orders of magnitude greater in terms of every player inside a world having a persistent memory that lasts over the entire span of the game. You could have tens of thousands of NPCs, all of whom have a complex relationship with each other and with the player – and it’s persistent. That requires a huge amount of local database that you can’t do in a discrete, standalone machine”

He's saying that Stadia allows you to do things that are only possible when you have shared storage that is "local" to every client in the datacenter.

This isn't a particularly outlandish concept. Having applications installed in shared storage is a standard feature of modern computing clusters (as well as old-school mainframe computers).

The Storage section of the article clearly doesn't claim that multiple clients (players) can run a game from a single install (i.e. memory instance)

What they are saying is that compared to consumer-grade memory hardware like HDDs, SSDs and Blu-Ray Discs, server infrastructure can do R/W cycles and load assets faster (see comparison image from AC Odyssey used)

w.r.t the Google VP comment: He is talking about a conceptual game design where both server and client reside within a Stadia instance. This is also mentioned in the DZone article - the basic gist is that since both server and client reside within Stadia, the interactions between server and client happen much faster (again, due to better infrastructure)

Literally the next line in the article refutes your entire point:

However, it could only be utilised if it’s a Google Stadia-exclusive game

ESO doesn't house a server inside Stadia AFAIK. Stadia players connect to PC-NA or PC-EU and play with other PC players. Server is hosted by ZOS in (outside) datacenters.

the1andonlyskwex

A Google datacenter isn't just a big rack of standalone consoles. The point of both articles is that Stadia pretty much uses the same infrastructure as everything else in the datacenter, which includes shared storage.

There isn't special hardware with shared storage that gets spun up when a Stadia exclusive game decides to host its servers with Google. The Stadia clients are that tightly integrated regardless of whether developers take advantage of it or not. That's why the first article talks about Stadia having petabytes of storage. It's not because each node/client has a separate storage instance. It's because they all directly access the same datacenter SAN.

Also, there's a big difference between shared storage and a "shared memory instance". For most games, storage only holds persistent stuff that doesn't need to change very often, like the game itself or saved states. When you actually run a game everything that's actively being used or changed is loaded into memory, which is much faster and has more direct access to the CPU. This is why games have loading screens, so that assets for a new zone can be loaded into memory. Because storage changes (and is accessed) so infrequently, there's no need for Stadia to have separate storage for each client connection. Problems can arise if lots of users are writing to the same storage simultaneously, but that's not an issue here, where games only really change when developers push updates.

I remember reading articles years ago about how shared storage allowed Stadia to push software updates super seamlessly, where a game would only need to be updated once on the server and that update would just propagate to every user when they loaded the game from the shared copy, but unfortunately some of that stuff is no longer easy to find amongst all of the more recent articles about Stadia.

When you connect to Stadia it just allocates you a compute node, which then accesses the shared storage to load the game you requested and whatever save states you might have into memory. At that point, your instance has it's own memory, but it never had to have it's own storage for the game itself or your saved info, both of which need to be accessible to all of the nodes anyway (because individual users aren't tied to particular compute nodes).

Furthermore, it's not even entirely clear that Stadia nodes don't have shared processors or memory.

It's pretty apparent that Stadia can scale up/down based on the needs of a particular game (directly mentioned in the articles in the context of developers requesting things like double nodes, but also implied by the different user costs for different graphic and sound options), which suggests that each node is more of a virtual machine than actual dedicated hardware. It's entirely possible (even likely) that a Stadia instance isn't even a dedicated box so much as a software-allocated slice of a much more capable server.

There are also some indications of shared memory in the form of Stadia's Stream Connect feature, where you can actually see multiple players screens simultaneously. This certainly requires shared memory at the point of the stream encoding, but it's otherwise somewhat unclear how far the memory sharing goes. For most games, player instances are probably totally separate (because combining them would be a lot of work for a port from another platform), but it certainly seems like combined memory is possible in the architecture.

Anyway, the TL;DR of this is that either each ESO Stadia client has petabytes of storage (based on your reading of the first article), or ESO Stadia clients have shared storage (based on my reading), and neither case would lead to ESO client size reductions being driven/required by Stadia specifically. Also, as further evidence, I submit the fact that the ESO client is now bigger than it was before u25, and it still runs fine on Stadia.

Danikat

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Blaming Stadia is a baseless conspiracy theory peddled by people who don't understand how Stadia works. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux PC with power comparable to a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X.

Also, reducing client size has a lot more to do with optimizing art assets than it does with moving computations around.

ZOS decide to match the PC incremental patch cadence to match with Stadia's, which means necessary PC patches which went through without red tape before, now had to be approved by Stadia certification.

As mentioned here

moving forward, subsequent incremental patches will occur every other week. If an emergency arises, we’ll of course work with Stadia to get a patch published ASAP. So in general, PC incrementals will now occur bi-weekly, but if needed, we can update quickly.

I was talking about ZOS allegedly moving calculations / assets to the server because of Stadia. I agree that the change in patch cadence was caused by Stadia certification/review requirements.

I've seen that floating around in the forums since U25 dropped, like this one

Hard to say as ZOS says that the client resizing was to remove redundant datafiles.

And why wouldn't it make sense for how Stadia works? Stadia is a PC running on a Google farm, yes? Wouldn't reducing the client size by moving assets/calculations to server reduce storage space needed/server load and costs for Google? The client size reduced by ~15GB after U25, that seems pretty substantial (Not saying it's true)

Like, pre U25 ESO client would need 80GB per Stadia player, vs. 66GB per Stadia player post U25

Where do I start?
1) Reducing client size has nothing to do with moving calculations to the server. Client size is driven by graphics and sound, neither of which are handled on the ESO servers because ZOS doesn't want to waste bandwidth streaming that stuff. The reduction in size was almost certainly due to removal of redundant assets and/or changes in texture compression, neither of which have any impact on the server.
2) Stadia is the least size-limited platform there is because it can use one copy of the game for multiple users/clients. This was even part of their marketing because it enabled some Stadia-exclusive features in other games.
3) This thread is literally the first time I've ever seen anyone try to link the client size changes to server performance. Usually claims about Stadia causing server overload revolve around misconceptions that the ESO servers are the Stadia client, or that Google's Stadia servers are too slow to run a normal game client. As far as the ESO servers are concerned, Stadia is just a Linux client, and it's about as powerful as a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X (while the old ESO client ran fine on much weaker hardware like the base PS4 and Xbox One).

2. You're saying multiple players can play using the same installed client in Stadia? That seems highly unlikely. Do you have any source for that? Like the entire Stadia playerbase is running off a 66GB ESO client? Or 5 players per client?

3. Not really, it's been discussed a lot before. I even found a previous comment from you on a thread from Feb 2021 while googling

That other thread is talking about calculations being moved, not about the reduced client size. They're totally unrelated, and neither has anything to do with Stadia.

As for multiple clients running off of one copy of the game, this article touches on it a little bit: https://dzone.com/articles/a-first-look-at-google-stadia
The short version is that Stadia clients live in Google data centers and just access the shared data center storage. It may seem weird if your only experience with computing is a home environment, but it's a lot faster and more efficient to have one super-fast (and super expensive) storage device that everyone on the network can access than it is for everyone to have their own (relatively slow) local copies of everything. Most likely there's one copy of each game client in each data center (to keep latency down), but there definitely isn't any need for every client to have it's own copy of every game.

Where does the article talk about multiple clients running off of one copy of the game?

Do you really think each individual client has petabytes of storage? If you understand anything about data centers it's clear that's how it works from the section titled "storage".

Here's another article with a direct quote from a Google VP: https://thegeek.games/2019/03/29/how-could-google-stadia-have-better-games-than-an-ordinary-console/
"If a developer can look at the resources that we can bring to bear on a game they can go orders of magnitude greater in terms of every player inside a world having a persistent memory that lasts over the entire span of the game. You could have tens of thousands of NPCs, all of whom have a complex relationship with each other and with the player – and it’s persistent. That requires a huge amount of local database that you can’t do in a discrete, standalone machine”

He's saying that Stadia allows you to do things that are only possible when you have shared storage that is "local" to every client in the datacenter.

This isn't a particularly outlandish concept. Having applications installed in shared storage is a standard feature of modern computing clusters (as well as old-school mainframe computers).

Bear in mind one of the first things they gave up on doing was Stadia exclusive games, so it might be that their ideas for what could be done with it proved to be a bit more ambitious than is practical.

Like how Amazon started off planning to make a game with an absolutely massive world with thousands of concurrent players to show off what their servers can do, then kept having to scale it down and tweak it until they ended up with New World - a fairly standard MMO.

zaria

danno8 wrote: »

alternatelder wrote: »

Don't tell me anyone is surprised Google shut down yet another project.

I'm not.

Of all the game streaming services Stadia always seemed like the worst option since you had to buy the games from their store, couldn't play any of your currently owned games using their hardware and if you wanted to give up the service you were forced to also give up all the content you purchased with it.

I am frankly very surprised that they are refunding all hardware and software purchases made through their Play or Stadia store.

Now could you play ESO on an PC account on Stadia? As in you played on PC at home but on stadia then on the road?
As I understand its how Xbox gamepass streaming works.

DMuehlhausen

Definitely not going to miss it.

While I think Add ons overall take away from the experience. Devs should just make certain attacks obvious and not have extra software telling you. In the trial group I was in for awhile there were a couple Stadia users and they couldn't have the add ons and would keep missing basic things and causing wipes.