The Stadia Makers Program in broad terms is a scheme to bring indie games to Stadia. This program was announced on March 23 2020 in partnership with Unity and was lauded at the time as a good thing for Stadia. As part of the Stadia Makers Program, they provided technical assistance, free hardware, and crucially funding. We have seen some fruit from the labors of this over the last year including Kaze and the Wild Masks, Tohu, Figment Creed Valley, and others.
It is our understanding after speaking to a number of indie game developers, who wish to remain anonymous, that the funding aspect of the Stadia Makers Program is scaled back or is no longer available. A number of developers have reported to us that when asked about the funding aspect of the Stadia Makers Program has been changed and they cannot receive funding. This has resulted in some developers lower the priority of the Stadia port of the game. For others, this has made them question bringing their game to the platform. While some games are still on track to come to Stadia.
We reached out to Stadia for comment and the Stadia spokesman said
The Stadia Makers program is still accepting applications through Stadia.dev/apply, which we’re actively working through. In addition, we’re currently busy supporting Makers partners in launching their games on Stadia, including Merek’s Market arriving on the Stadia store next week.”
Thursday September 9th
During our conversations with developers, we also discovered a number of 3rd party game projects and partnerships have been canceled from Stadia. These cancellations happened a number of months ago. Over the last week, we have learned that Tchia is no longer coming to Stadia and is heading to PlayStation. Following a tweet by Stadiasource’s Lee Reid, this may have been the case with Tchia.
We approached Stadia for comments about partnerships and the funding and were told that they cannot comment on individual business deals. This was an expected response.
The Stadia Makers Program is still available via Stadia.Dev.
1 thought on “Questions arise about the funding aspect of the Stadia Makers Program”
oof , who really knows whats going on there