Today is the day for those patient gamers who signed up months ago to be Google Stadia Founders. However, despite the cloud-based service going live today, many of the earliest adopters are yet to receive their invite codes to access the service, while others are seeing hardware delivery dates slip.
9to5Google reports three of four members of its staff are yet to receive their all-important invite codes, despite all signing up to pre-order the service on the first possible day of availability. They’re not alone. The Stadia subreddit and Stadia Discord communities contain reports from ‘hundreds, if not thousands’ of people in the same boat, having pre-ordered Stadia on June 6.
That’s despite gamers who pre-ordered Google Stadia much later gaining access to the service before the first founders. Google had pledged invites would be sent out on a first-come-first-served basis, meaning the earliest backers would gain first access to the service.
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The company had promised the codes would be sent out as soon as the device packages were shipped to pre-order customers. However, Google had set a deadline of 9am on Tuesday morning for all of those backers to receive their codes.
Google is now acknowledging the issues with members of the Stadia team responding to the concerns of gamers angry at Google for failing to hold up its end.
A poster identified as Chris from Google wrote on Discord: “Hi @everyone, We’re aware that some of you who pre-ordered Founder’s Edition may not have received your invite codes in the expected time-frame. The Stadia team is actively investigating this issue, and we’ll be back with an update as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.”
On Reddit, Grace from Google wrote back with a similar message, saying: “We’re aware that some of you who pre-ordered Founder’s Edition may not have received your invite codes in the expected time-frame. The Stadia team is actively investigating this issue, and we’ll be back with an update as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.”
This comes after Google began shifting delivery dates for some people who’d ordered the Stadia controller and Chromecast Ultra bundle. Some are now seeing dates of November 21-23 quoted for delivery, despite ordering on June 6.
Our review of the service complains that many of the key features are missing on day one, the lack of an offline mode, the inability to play in 4K through the web browser and the way video compression affects picture quality. The launch line-up of 22 titles is hardly enthusing gamers either.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.