Google faces lawsuit over claims of 4K streaming on Stadia

The lawsuit alleged Google had “greatly exaggerated” the streaming quality and “display resolution” to “juice subscription members” for the cloud-based gaming platform.

Google Stadia (Reuters)

Google is facing a lawsuit over the claims of 4K streaming on its cloud-based gaming Stadia platform.

According to 9to5Google, the lawsuit was originally filed in New York in October 2020. It recently got everyone's attention when the suit moved to the New York Federal Court. The lawsuit alleges Google had “greatly exaggerated” the streaming quality and “display resolution” to “juice subscription members” for its new gaming platform. It also seeks “compensatory damages” from Google.

The report pointed out that Google Stadia indeed has faced issues with 4K streaming. A separate AndroidPolice report notes that Google Stadia did have the capabilities to stream games at 4K resolution, but the support was restricted to only one device, Chromecast Ultra, until March 2020. The web client added 4K support much later. The report further said that some graphic-intensive games were rendered at a lower resolution. For instance, Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2 offered up to 1440p/30fps. In the case of Doom Eternal, developers had promised to “true 4K”, but just before the launch, they said it would be upscaled from 1880p.

The latest reports come after Google announced shutting down its in-house gaming studios. The company said the move would help increase focus on the content catalogue from Google's industry partners.

“Creating best-in-class games from the ground up takes many years and significant investment, and the cost is going up exponentially. Given our focus on building on the proven technology of Stadia as well as deepening our business partnerships, we've decided that we will not be investing further in bringing exclusive content from our internal development team SG&E, beyond any near-term planned games,” said Google in a blog post.

Interestingly, a recent Kotaku report revealed that Stadia leadership was not transparent about the future of the in-house gaming division. The report said Stadia developers learned about the shutting down of the in-house gaming studios at the same time as everyone through an internal email and conference call with Google Stadia VP and GM Phil Harrison. Just a week before the announcement, Harrison had written to the team about the “great progress” studios had made.