Google Stadia Finally Get A Search Function

I love the internet, also yes, that is sarcasm. I’ve covered the Epic Games Store for how long now? Almost two years, and every corner I turn it is “Chinese spyware” this, “it is a bad storefront for consumers/developers” that. I honestly love how quickly people will defend Steam after all the depths Valve goes to in an attempt to make their storefront the most valuable (the sarcasm comes free with Chinese spyware), all the while deriding other storefronts for merely existing.

Why is that important? Well, quite a lot of the criticism toward Epic has been the missing features, rightful criticism. I won’t sugarcoat this, but they do have some ways to go and it could be done quicker. That said, at least Epic implemented their search function soon after release. It would have been better to launch with it, but here were are. It took about four months to do it. They didn’t wait 16 months and after the parent company pulled the plug on generating first-party interest… Huh, Google?

Rumor has it that a search bar is in the process of rolling out… 👀

… except it is NOT a rumor. 🥳 Be patient please~ This update will reach everyone soon! https://t.co/fh9TVdLnDc pic.twitter.com/Lev0qLc6RX

— Grace Yang (@Grace_Yang_) April 28, 2021

Grace Yang, community manager for Google Stadia, revealed a little early that the upcoming feature was coming to the Google Stadia storefront. They are adding a search function. Yes, the promising new upstart that is known as Google that is setting out to “revolutionize gaming,” are sometime this week adding the ability to search for games. Once again, this is 16 months following the storefront stumbling out the blocks. In that time Jade Raymond left the game development side of Stadia, and Google pulled the plug on even bothering with making games.

I’ll put my hands up and be clear on this. I don’t like the idea of Stadia because there are flaws with the platform’s control, such as infrastructure. I spoke about it this week with David after his internet dropped for most of the day. If a major market such as the US can’t handle a stable connection with high speeds consistently, how does something like Stadia stay afloat? If you have slow internet, a connection as wavering as a manic depressive, or simply don’t play games where those two things coalesce into the perfect storm, why would you pick up a Stadia? Say you miss a payment to your ISP, you can’t play your games.

That is my entire mindset on this platform, so when there are three people still cheering on Stadia to cross the finish line and ‘prove’ me wrong, I am baffled. Some, as Polygon notes in their piece on this, are deriding the long wait. A few others in the replies to Yang’s tweet and on the forum post are staying optimistic. The forum post (linked above) goes into a little more detail than a tweet can, with a few ideas of what is next to come, though without dates for their release.