Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Google Stadia concerns

We have recently seen that patching/updating Baldurs gate 3 can and will be delayed on various platforms (this is perfectly understandable in regards to Mac versions due to different chip sets, and awesome that Mac is getting patch 6 today!)

Google Stadia however, is a different affair. Stadia is a subscription based service that is SUPPOSED to offer higher end PC gaming hardware streamed to your drvice. There has been no indication from Google that patching the Stadia machines should be any different from patching a PC game on steam or GOG, infact when asked about the delay of baldurs gate 3 patch 6, Google has solely laid the blame on "the developer"...namely larian.

Could a Larian moderator possibly elaborate on the challenges associated with patching a Stadia game? Does the "custom" nature of Stadias CPU and AMD GPU greatly affect the performance of these patches?

Many Stadia users worry, as we have to weigh the pros and cons of paying a monthly fee to play these games on higher settings vs possibly saving money up to buy new hardware, so being in the dark with Google only saying "not our problem, the devs haven't sent us the patch" leaves us very apprehensive for the future.

Thank you in advance.

Stadia users should mainly worry about the service shutting down before BG3 is even released...

In regards to Stadia, it seems to be performance related issues this time around. Due to the fact of being aware of performance issues on Stadia, I've got reason to believe that contrary to the alleged Google claims, they have been sent various iterations of the patch to be tested and evaluated enough to come to the conclusion that it needs more time to optimize for Stadia.


Source: Hotfix #16 Update Post

I can't comment on Larian nor Stadia's position, but I can refer to a scenario during Divinity Original Sin 2, where GOG users were delayed a particular update due to some issues with GOG pushing the update to their servers. I don't think that's the case for Stadia and patch 6, but since Stadia is a closed cloud server system under Google, I can only imagine the logistics and back & forth that may take time just due to that, along with actually working out the performance issues on Stadia hardware.

That's all we can really guess at this point, and I find it important to make it clear that I'm not employed by Larian and thus this is more a comment from me being very active in the community and informed enough to have some opinions on it, rather than any official response to hold Larian to

Fingers crossed that it doesn't take too long to sort out the performance issues though

Thank you for the prompt response!

I certainly find it troubling that Stadia is having performance issues with Baldur's gate 3 since I have a second copy running fine on an 8 year old gaming laptop.

I'll have to pay closer attention to Stadia's performance in the future, the technology's potential is amazing if we can get past the doom and gloom of "google doesn't support it's products" .

Cloud based gaming has amused me ever since early OnLive days. Then there was... LiquidSky? I think it's cool, even though I share some criticisms of various platforms of my own. Still wondering when someone's going to do a hybrid solution of just streaming certain assets to local computers, a cloud storage device of sorts to counter the rising game installation size requirements. Games like BG3 are basically streaming textures already. I'm just waiting for something like it to come along. Inevitable imo.

For me Stadia reintroduced me to gaming and I am more than happy to have the opportunity to play BG3 without having to wait 5+ years before budget laptops can handle contemporary games. I don't think it will shut down, but there's always the possibility it migrates to a different service or changes into a white label service where different publishers can have their own netflix-style game-streaming channel (e.g. ubisoft+). So from the perspective of someone whose last console was a PS2 and last 'gaming rig' had difficulty running Rome total war 2, I don't mind that it is equal to previous gen rather than next gen in terms of graphs as anything better than what I knew is shiny and futuristic to me.
I do feel the need to correct you on the subscription comment you made though. The service is free, you buy the game and have limitless playtime. The subscription is optional and includes the possibility to stream in 4k and surround audio as well as a collection of free games you can claim and always can play once claimed (even after re-subbing, you just regain access to the same games in contrast to xbox live's rotation system). Since I have no screen that can do 4k (or hdr), I don't see a reason to pay for the subscription and felt the need to correct you.

Edit: some afterthoughts and extra speculation.

I would also be surprised if stadia would be the issue given how the cyberpunk release was a total disaster, except on stadia where it ran well (in so far a buggy unfinished game can run well). I think it's more an issue of prioritizing and assigning dev teams to where they have the most impact, aka bigger playerbase, and thus a choice to put the stadia development on a side-track - possibly outsourced to one of the new studios - meaning they first make the PC version, then move it to the smaller mac team and the - probably even smaller - stadia team to port the main version to these respective platforms. As far as I know Stadia simply runs on Linux so it shouldn't be this much harder given BG3 was developed with this in mind from the beginning. Some updates ago Larian posted something on Twitter about Stadia's verification process being very strict (and slow) but then in the next patch they ensured it released at the same time, so if they want to, they can, I just fear they don't really want to anymore.
Apart from being disappointed by going trough the hype build up, then a week of spoilers and waiting without news, which although not nice I could understand, the fact that the other platforms are already receiving hotfixes for a patch I still can not access is very demotivating to stay involved with BG3. Not blaming Larian for this, but i think they should be aware of this, as I imagine that even if the Stadia playerbase is smaller, it would be stupid to ignore them as I feel it is an interesting demographic of people pulled back into gaming, who although not willing to spend the money on expensive hardware, are probably in a point in their life where they are more affluent than your average teenage gamer who needs to ask his/her parent for money for new games. Moreover, i feel that they are fairly overrepresented and quite active on these forums and reddit relative to the platforms player base compared to PC. i think this could be due to a lot of infinity game players and fans not having the means or will to update their hardware have the possibility to play BG3 nonetheless on stadia. So perhaps from a marketing and EA development perspective these are good qualities for a costumer/tester population: dedicated fans of the older games, hesitant to buy hardware but probably in a better financial situation on average, more 'in it' for BG3 than for gaming in general. etc etc etc bla bla bla just give us the damn patch please !

What do you mean by this, if you don't mind explaining?

SerraSerra, You hit the nail on the head for us using Stadia. My GF and I basically have no games to look forward to playing except for BG3 at this point. We've played and finished DOS 2 several times, and after that played through DOS 1 and just recently finished that. We've now started another DOS 2 playthrough, but would really rather play BG3. But we've played the others on PS4, no PC. Once we heard about Stadia and BG3 we were thrilled.

Not really looking forward to buying 2 gaming PCs just so we can play one game. So Stadia was perfect.

If there were other "good" co-op, turn based RPGs that we could play together on PC, then maybe we'd invest. But I certainly haven't found anything. At this point, we "might" invest in a couple of Steam Decks when they're available and run them on TVs. But for now, Stadia is the only option.

I think Stadia is excellent. I'm just not sure how well it was marketed. By that, I mean that I didn't know anything about it until I started playing BG3. So, basically it's perfect for a person like me, but a person like me didn't even know it existed.

I have an I7 laptop that's about six years old. It has an Nvidia Quadro graphics card, but the computer just can't handle this game. The latest driver for the graphics card (392.63) still comes up as out of date when I try to run the game on Steam. When I got this computer, it cost about 3k. There's zero chance I'm going to go out right now and buy another computer for 2-3k just so I can play this game, and as far as I can tell, that's about how much I'll need to spend.

As such, I found out about Stadia and got the game there. It works well. Mostly. I'm still waiting on Patch 6 to update, but other than that, it works well.

I also only discovered Stadia because of BG3, my PC is Linux and has a fairly middling graphics card.

I am not very impressed by the 'Pro' content on Stadia but technically it is fine.

Like SerraSerra I am sadly no longer a teenage gamer but I would be happy to buy any old school turn based RPG that Stadia want to sell.

Perhaps Larian could release DOS 2 on Stadia while we are waiting for patch 6

That would be super nice actually ... Except if it would delay anything BG3 on stadia that is. By the way, with them opening studios around the world, I guess they still didn't evolve to sweatshop style studios were they work during the weekend so we'll have to wait until Monday minimally, again.

Edit: forcing people to work weekends would actually be worse than delaying a patch, but still, god I want it, my stadia is ready !