It Took Way Too Long for a Game to Take Advantage of Stadia’s Killer Feature

And it’s disappointing

Close-up detail of the D-pad and analogue control stick on a Google Stadia video game controller with a Night Blue finish. Photo: Olly Curtis/Future Publishing/Getty Images

On July 1, Crayta, a game that allows people to collaborate on making other games, exclusively launched on Google Stadia. It brought with it the first beta of the platform’s State Share feature. First announced in March 2019, State Share promised to let players link out to an exact moment in gameplay for others to click on and interact with themselves; the moment when a fully decked-out character approaches a climactic boss fight after hours of questing, for example. It’s the kind of power that’s so far been reserved for save states in emulators and game modders.

Crayta’s implementation of the feature, however, doesn’t live up to this promise. And while the developers may be doing the best they can with the feature as it exists today, it highlights how far Google has to go to deliver on the lofty promises of Stadia.

Google Could Get Tons of Data From Its Gaming Platform

The term “State Share” isn’t terribly descriptive, but players are intuitively familiar with the concept of game states, even if they don’t use the term…