Stadia vice-president and product head John Justice has left Google, following the closure of Stadia’s internal studios and the departure of Stadia Games head Jade Raymond earlier this year.
Justice’s departure was reported by The Information earlier this week. While he’s yet to officially announce the news himself, Google confirmed the VP’s exist in a statement, telling 9to5google: “We can confirm John is no longer with Google, and we wish him well on his next step”.
It was only six months ago that Justice seemed bullish about Stadia’s future. In an interview with The Escapist, he talked of Google’s plans to continue developing “more and more in-house games”. Just three months after that, however, and those promises would come to nothing—Stadia’s internal studios shuttered, with only one first-party game ever seeing the light of day (even if it technically came to PC a year earlier).
The closure infamously also followed Phil Harrison telling Stadia employees that progress was going great, five days before layoffs began. Harrison later wrote in an official blog post that Stadia would be moving away from a storefront / subscription service, and towards a technology Google can license out to publishers and developers.