Stadia version of Terraria is back on after developer reconciles with Google

[Shawn Knight]

The big picture: Terraria is an action-adventure sandbox game that originally launched on the PC in mid-2011 and has since been ported to most other major platforms, including the Nintendo Switch in 2019. It has been compared to a 2D version of Minecraft, but thanks to the many updates that have been released over the years, the game has a feel that is uniquely its own.

Cooler heads have seemingly prevailed in the spat between Terraria developer Re-Logic and Google over the title’s fate on cloud gaming service Stadia.

Early last month, Re-Logic founder Andrew Spinks revealed that his Google account had been disabled for more than three weeks with no explanation. He was also locked out of all associated accounts including Gmail and YouTube. With no recourse and no answers, Spinks decided to cancel the upcoming Stadia port of Terraria.

@Google my account has now been disabled for over 3 weeks. I still have no idea why, and after using every resource I have to get this resolved you have done nothing but given me the runaround.

— Andrew Spinks (@Demilogic) February 8, 2021

In the weeks since, it appears as though the two sides were able to mend the relationship.

In a recently updated post on the Re-Logic message board, the company said that after a month of pushing and with the support of their fans, Google finally reached out and provided a lot of transparency around the situation. Furthermore, they helped them restore access to all of their accounts.

Due to how much work has been invested in the project thus far, Re-Logic decided to allow the launch of Terraria on Stadia to proceed. The game is currently at Google for certification review, Re-Logic added, but didn’t supply a scheduled launch date.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/88774-stadia-version-terraria-back-after-developer-reconciles-google.html

 

[Dimitriid]

I'm surprised here. But not at the reversal, I'm surprising the devs are even bothering. If there's a pattern here is that Google ONLY ever seems to respond to public pressure through social media and that is the only way to get anything done by them. Be it Stadia, Youtube, Gmail or Google accounts inexplicably committing harakiri and locking you out, you name it.

My issue here is not that the devs are going forward with their release: Good for them I am sure all of the 8 fans that care about both Terraria and Stadia will be trilled.

My issue is the message this sent: Google tacitly admits that the only way to reach any kind of resolution when their automated support systems fail is to have a very large social media present, enough that news sites pick up the story for you and make a scandal.

Until Google starts actually putting humans on this issues at the very least to respond and explain WHY they inexplicably did the things they did, Google is just a terrible company for you to base your business out of. This includes youtube, using their cloud tools and services and of course probably the worst of all is going into business with Stadia. At this point is just asking for trouble and accepting the fact that at any point, for any reason even for reasons that are not under your control or your responsibility at all whatsoever, you might be cut off from doing business with them and they usually don't even have any real person to resolve grievances, not even a minimum wage almost slave worker somewhere in Asia that is only ever allowed to respond vaguely or with canned responses. Not even that is just "Your account is gone, you have no recourse"

 

[messy]

Google can screw off, and Stadia is destined to fail, but I can't blame the devs for looking to recoup money for time they already put in.

The big thing they need to do is get the heck away from google for any critical infrastructure - do not use them for email for starters!