Google Stadia was pretty much dead on arrival, and far from the trailblazer for cloud-based gaming that it was supposed to be. Many issues attributed to this, one of which is the fact that its library of games remains pathetic. At the time of writing, only 28 games are currently playable.

According to a recent report by Business Insider, developers have revealed that the reason why they haven’t released their games on Google Stadia stems from lack of incentive to do so.

In this case, Google simply isn’t offering enough money. One indie developer even stated that the money was “kind of non-existent”, while another referred to it as “so low that it wasn’t even part of the conversation.”

Money isn’t the only problem though, as there is also a lack of faith in Stadia and cloud-based gaming in general. The platform’s audience is far smaller than those for consoles and PC, which makes releasing games on Stadia too much of a risk, one that these developers dare not take.

An anonymous publisher executive said:

“With Google, it’s easy to look at them as, well, it’s Google.

But they’ve failed a ton in the past and walked away from major services.”

That’s true, for the most part. Look at what happened with services like Google Plus, and other similar failed endeavours in the past. Google is promising 120 more titles to arrive on Stadia by the end of 2020, including upcoming highly-anticipated games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Doom Eternal.

Still, the question remains; why should these developers go to Stadia when consoles and PC are much better and more lucrative platforms? Until Google answers that question, the Stadia will continue to limp on by and probably just fade into obscurity sometime in the future, in the vein of other gaming gimmicks like VR and motion control.