Journey to the Savage Planet for Stadia has several bugs
Journey to the Savage Planet has several bugs on Google Stadia, including an unidentified problem that causes a freeze in the main menu, making it impossible to start the game. It can happen, developers will soon publish a hot fix, you will think. But things will not go like this.The problem in this case is that Big G has closed the internal studios of Google Stadia by dissolving the Stadia Games and Entertainment label, which was in charge of developing and publishing Journey to the Savage Planet for the platform.
A user tried to contact Google support, which sent the unfortunate player back to the publisher 505 Games. The latter has instead invited the customer to contact Google again, since the Mountain View company has dealt directly with the porting and 505 Games has no way to get hold of the assets of the version for Stadia. Typhoon Studios, developers of Journey to the Savage Planet, no longer exists and has been shut down by Google, consequently no one can put their hand to the porting code for Google Stadia.
In summary:
Google buys the Journey to the Savage Planet studio Google publishes the game under its label Google closes Typhoon Studios The game has problems on Stadia, currently it is not possible to solve them To date therefore Journey to the Savage Planet does not work correctly on Stadia and a bugs may prevent you from going beyond the main menu. And apparently no one can unblock the situation.
Update - A clarification arrives from Google, the company makes it known that it is working to find a solution and thus be able to publish an update for Journey to the Savage Planet.
Stadia struggling to fix Journey to the Savage Planet bug after firing developer
Stadia has said it will try to fix a bug stopping people from playing Journey to the Savage Planet - a game from the studio it acquired, but whose staff it has now made redundant.
The bug is a serious one - the game currently freezes on the main menu, making it unplayable - but has so far lain unaddressed, as there is no-one left to fix it.
Reddit user lordubuntu first flagged the issue at the beginning of February - just a day after Google announced it would shut down its internal Stadia studios, including Journey to the Savage Planet's developer, with around 150 jobs affected.
Lordubuntu was told by Stadia support that the bug would be passed to publisher 505 Games to fix. After not hearing anything more for a week, Lordubuntu chased the issue - only for Google Support to suggested they contact 505 Games directly.
On contacting 505's customer support, lordubuntu was told there was nothing the publisher could do 'since all of the game code and data on Stadia is owned by Google'.
Asked if this meant the game was broken permanently, a 505 Games representative stated that Google had acted as publisher for the game on Stadia, and that since its developer Typhoon Studios was also now part of Google, it was only Google who could fix the problem.
The above was collated together in a large thread on the Stadia reddit, where Stadia community manager Grace acknowledged the issue:
'Hi folks, I understand how frustrating this situation is, and I'm sorry for the delayed update,' GraceFromGoogle replied. 'We're actively working with our partners to identify a fix, and I will do my best to pass updates along.'
Development on all internal Stadia projects has now ceased, while Google has said it will offer its streaming tech to publishers.