Google’s cloud-gaming service, Stadia, will soon be available for free. For now, Stadia users pay $129 (RM~533) for the Founder’s Edition and $9.99 a month for the service. However, that all is about to change after Stadia chief Phil Harrison said in an interview with Protocol recently that Stadia will have a free tier of the service in the coming months.

“The big strategic difference is that over the next few months you will be able to experience Stadia for free,” Harrison said in an interview with Protocol.

“No money down, without having to put a box in your home, you can just click and play amazing games straight from our data center.”

But the cloud-gaming service hasn’t fared as well as they would’ve hoped. Many users have complained about the lack of communication, release, feature updates, etc. Reddit user u/Gizoogle posted in the Stadia subbreddit, and that it had been 69 days (now 79) since it’s release without any news about the platform. Google had mentioned that 120 games would release in 2020, but they still haven’t announced what those games are, or when they’re releasing.

Not the greatest way to treat customers and users who believed and invested in your service. But hey it’s Google, no harm no foul?

Hopefully this new ‘free’ tier will help to bolster user numbers, and also gives curious people on whether they’d like the platform. But considering they’re going against the behemoths in the gaming industry, like Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo AND Mobile gaming, it’s hard to compete. And the fact that they’re not really being transparent about what’s going is probably going to drive potential customers away.

Damn Google, do better than this.