Journey to the Savage Planet Devs Can't Fix Google Stadia Version of the Game

Google pulled the dick moves of dick moves the other week when it announced — quite suddenly — that it was shutting down any and all internal development for first-party Google Stadia titles. While the news was softened somewhat by the revelation that the affected employees would probably find work within Google, that was certainly a cold comfort for Google Stadia users, who were likely looking forward to having a few exclusives to make their subscriptions actually worth the money.

In any case, one of the studios affected by this abrupt shutdown was Typhon Studios, the folks behind Journey to the Savage Planet, who were purchased in 2019. Journey to the Savage Planet was released on other platforms as well as Stadia, but it was primarily a Stadia title, and came free with your subscription.

If you can play it, in any case: because as it turns out, the game is currently bugged out the backside, but now that Google has let go of all its developers, well… there’s no one around to actually fix the game. Worse still, since the game is being run on Google’s remote servers, players can’t even troubleshoot the problems themselves.

As Kotaku reports, the developer has confirmed that they’re basically powerless to do anything to resolve any issues:
 

“Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do from our end right now since all of the game code and data on Stadia is owned by Google.”

They elaborated in a follow-up message:
 

“Please note that the publisher for Journey to the Savage Planet on Stadia is in fact Stadia Games and Entertainment (Google LLC) and, unfortunately, we have no way of assisting with this kind of issue from our end. We suggest reaching out to Stadia support again and informing them that the publisher for the Stadia version of the game is actually them.”

So that’s awkward. I very much doubt Google has a plan in store for this — if they’re willing to just drop their ambitions as game devs so quickly, I don’t think one game’s bugs is enough to make them take action — but it’s definitely sad to see.