Image: Rockstar Games
250 days of playtime gone in the blink of an eye.
Google announced last week that it was shutting down its game streaming service Stadia, which has had massive unforeseen consequences for one gamer in particular. YouTuber Colour certainly never saw Stadia’s shutdown coming, as the content creator logged over 6,000 hours in Red Dead Redemption 2’s online mode Red Dead Online… on Google Stadia alone.
Ouch. If we’re going to do the maths here, Colour’s total playtime on Red Dead Online - assuming he stops playing right now - is equivalent to 250 whole days. That’s more time than most people have spent on any one game in their entire lives, which makes this a pretty unfathomable loss for Colour. It’s worth noting that Google Stadia only launched on Google Stadia in November 2019, so Colour had less than three years to accrue all this playtime too.
Colour hasn’t only been playing Red Dead Online for fun, though. His whole schtick on YouTube and TikTok is exclusively creating videos for Red Dead Online, though he hasn’t been very active on these platforms in the last year. Colour is now pleading for developer Rockstar Games to somehow allow him to transfer his 6,000-hour save file to other platforms - an option that is currently unavailable for the game’s multiplayer mode. Given how Rockstar has all but given up on Red Dead Online and shifted focus to GTA 6’s development instead however, we’re not optimistic of his chances.
Colour isn’t the only person out there who was caught off guard by Stadia’s shutdown. Google made the announcement without informing any Stadia developers beforehand, leading to multiple game studios being blindsided in the midst of porting their games to the streaming service. Some developers were relying on Stadia ports to recoup development costs, while others were concerned that they wouldn’t be paid for their upcoming Stadia games.
Hopefully Colour gets to keep his 6,000-hour save file, at least. I’ve probably spent hundreds of hours across The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild collecting Korok seeds and Gwent cards, and I would burst into tears if I had to do it all again.
