Terraria dev's Google account got fixed, so it's coming to Stadia after all

Earlier this month, developer Andrew Spinks said that he was cancelling Terraria's release on Google Stadia because his Google account had been deactivated with no stated reason, and he'd been unable to recover it for weeks. "I will not be involved with a corporation that values their customers and partners so little," he tweeted, concluding that "Doing business with [Google] is a liability."

Now it seems that the issue has been resolved, and Terraria is again on route to Google's beleaguered cloud gaming platform.

The news that Terraria for Stadia was back on was delivered not by Spinks himself, but by fellow Re-Logic developer Ted "Loki" Murphy in a forum update.

As you may have noticed, we had a ton of issues to kick off the year stemming from the locking-down of Redigit's entire Google account in early January. After a month of pushing (and with the immense support of our fans), Google finally reached out and was able to provide a lot of transparency around the situation and to restore access to all of our accounts. Due to the hard work the Stadia team has put in - as well as our partners at 505 Games - we have decided that we will allow the upcoming launch Terraria on Google Stadia to proceed. The Terraria Stadia build is based on the DR Studios 1.4.0.5 (latest) build, and is currently at Google for certification review.

Stadia is Google's cloud gaming subscription service, and it's in dire need of third-party games like Terraria, having closed down all its internal development teams.

This news comes at the same time as a new report published yesterday by Wired which delves into the issues faced by those development teams while trying to make games. Some sources concluded that Google "should have followed in Microsoft’s path and focused on acquiring studios rather than trying to start from scratch," which seems extremely charitable to Microsoft.

Stadia seems doomed, as a brand if not a technology, but I suppose this is good news for the seven people who don't already own Terraria and would rather play it via a confusing and expensive subscription service rather than just pay £7 to buy it (or £3 on mobile). In other news, all my stuff is in the Google ecosystem, and if I lost my Google account I'd lose not just 16 years of email but, like, every kid ever taken of my kid that I haven't had printed. Woops.