Enlarge / I wish I had more games installed for iPad-on-the-couch photo purposes, but I just don't keep that many games on my drive at once! (credit: Kevin Purdy)

Nvidia's GameStream had one job, the one in its name: stream games from the Nvidia graphics card inside your PC to the Nvidia Shield hooked up to your TV (or, back in the day, a Shield tablet ). It did this job fairly well, making setup simple and optimizing games with some custom stream-smoothing. Now Nvidia is removing GameStream from Shield devices —but an even better DIY game-streaming solution is already available. Let's take a look at it and talk to the developers about why and how they made it.

Nvidia's GameStream was a key part of the hardware company's pitch for its Shield products. (credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia is done with local streaming

Nvidia says a Shield update arriving this month will make it so "the GameStream feature will no longer be available in app." If you try to skip the Shield update, GameStream will still stop working at some point (and possibly be removed from the GeForce Experience app in Windows). In the meantime, trying to dodge that update means not using GeForce Now , one of Nvidia's recommended replacements, on your Shield and missing out on all the other update fixes and features that arrive with system updates.

If you're a Shield owner, like I am, this stinks. Shield devices have merits of their own , receiving the longest and most consistent stream of updates of any Android/Google TV device ever released. They're still perfectly functional as stream boxes (and even more appealing if Google lands an NFL package ). But a big benefit of having both a Shield and a GeForce graphics card will soon be shunted.

Enlarge / A good Stadia idea finally comes to Google. (credit: Google / Sam Machkovech)

The earliest sales pitch for Stadia , the Google streaming service that beams high-end video games to web browsers via the cloud, included the idea that it might work as simply as Googling your favorite game. You might search for a popular game to learn more about it, only to immediately see an option to start playing it inside your web browser, no additional hardware required—and perhaps no payment, either.

Nearly three years after Stadia's official launch —and 18 months after the service's massive internal downgrade —that scenario has finally begun to play out. What's more, the feature appears to be streamer-agnostic, as multiple Stadia-like streaming services have started appearing in search results.

Oh, look, Stadia trials get a slightly spiffier font

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  That's a handy way to learn that Destiny 2 is immediately playable in my web browser... entirely for free... on more than one compatible service!

This week, Google rolled out a limited launch of a "Play Now" tab that appears on searches for select video games on desktop browsers. (As of press time, out of three Google accounts tested, the search results shown in this article only appear on one of them.) This tab can be found in the right-hand "knowledge panel" that is otherwise automatically populated with user reviews, game details, and digital download purchase links.

Stadia has confirmed another few new announcements for their Linux-powered game streaming service that will be coming soon. Some out now, some have no release date yet.has confirmed another few new announcements for their Linux-powered game streaming service that will be coming soon, although neither has an actual release date.

Two recently we missed were Street Power Football and Hundred Days , both of which are out now and available on the Stadia store.

As for other titles coming up? Just this week they announced Super Animal Royale and Shantae and the Pirate's Curse will be coming over to Stadia. Super Animal Royale will be "Coming Soon" with no clearer date. It's going to be free to play too, so it gives people yet another chance to try out something on Stadia with no commitment to anything.

Watch video on YouTube.com

Meanwhile Shantae and the Pirate's Curse is said to be coming out on Stadia "Summer 2021".

If you missed it, Stadia claim the service is "alive and well" in a recent interview. Certainly will be interesting to see how long Stadia sticks around for, with ~100 games coming to it this year. Stadia still have a problem of getting their marketing right too - so many people still don't quite understand Stadia itself is free as Stadia Pro is an optional subscription to get free games and 4K support (varies between games). Stadia really need to be making all of it a lot clearer for potential people to sign up to it.

Play Stadia on Linux on Stadia.com with a Chromium browser.

Despite everywhere you look there's always someone pointing to the Google Graveyard, the game streaming service Stadia is still soldiering on in the face of overwhelming competition.

In a new interview with GamesIndustry.biz , Stadia's developer marketing lead Nate Ahearn says the service is actually "alive and well" and went on to mention how they have over 100 new titles launching for Stadia through 2021. They're also continuing to grow their Stadia Makers program where they help Unity developers port to Stadia (with another 20 coming from that) along with continuing partnerships with many AAA studios like Capcom, EA, Square Enix, Ubisoft and others.

A while ago Google shut down the Stadia Games & Entertainment studio, which seemed like a bad sign. Following that, they lost key developers like Jade Raymond, John Justice and a bunch of other staff members recently who all joined Raymond's new Haven Studio. Were those all signs of a service in trouble? Not quite , it's pretty much just the tail-end of SG&E closing. Still, no big first-party exclusive games to pull people in isn't doing the service any favours.

Stadia, much like Linux desktop gaming, faces a huge uphill battle to actually win people over. The tech is there, it just needs a lot more games and people to actually use it. For Stadia especially, they have to fight off the upcoming Amazon Luna along with Xbox Cloud Gaming - both of which will give a much more Netflix-like subscription model rather than buying individual games.

In other news, Stadia recently finally got a search bar and more UI changes planned.

Play Stadia on Linux on Stadia.com with a Chromium browser.

Despite the rising amount of people believing Stadia won't be around for long, we're into another year and Google have announced that more than 100 games will release for Stadia through 2021.

After a pretty rough time with Terraria cancelled and bridges burned, along with Stadia shutting down first-party game development which left a lot of Stadia users worried they definitely needed to put out some good news. In a fresh community post , the Stadia team officially announced "more than 100 games that will be added to the Stadia store for our players in 2021".

Here's more of what they just recently confirmed:

Shantae: Half-Genie Hero Ultimate Edition (Feb. 23)

Watch video on YouTube.com

The Stadia team also reiterated that plenty more are also confirmed and have been announced previously like Far Cry 6, Riders Republic and Hello Engineer.

You can play on Stadia.com with a Chrome based browser.

While Google hasn't seen the best news with Stadia lately after stopping first-party games and Terraria being cancelled , the store continues on with some fresh announcements of new games, updates and some sales.

Firstly, a quick look at the new games. For those subscribing to Stadia Pro, the just released horror adventure Little Nightmares II is going to be another game you can claim free with the sub. Additionally, Pikuniku , the colourful and quirky platformer is now live to buy in the Stadia store.

Now Stadia also has another free to play game, as Crayta now has a Starter Edition available for everyone. Allowing anyone to jump in to create and play games, plus it has expanded with the Stadia Crowd Play Beta feature which allows people to jump right into the action if someone is streaming the game to YouTube:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Crayta will also be heading to the Epic Store for the main Windows release, so no Linux desktop support - Stadia only. It will have cross-platform play and cross-progression so either way a nice boost in player numbers perhaps.

As for game updates PAC-MAN Mega Tunnel Battle got a new addon that gives new themes, special items, new player icons and character accessories. Destiny 2 also continues to be updated for Stadia with the Season of the Chosen now live but no word yet on the cross-play for it.

Something that has been asked a lot in the Stadia community is for FIFA to come, probably the biggest Football game around. Well, it's now confirmed. FIFA 21 arrives on Stadia on March 17.

There's also quite a few games on sale you can see on Stadia.com .

The developer of Chiaki, a free and open source Remote Play client that supports both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 has gone out with a bit of a bang.

Chiaki 2.1.0 was just released as the "final release of Chiaki for the time being", with it now going into maintenance mode. So they might return to it at some point but for now the feature support is done. The last release wasn't just bug fixes either though, it pulled in some nice new features.

Here's the highlights:

• Added Motion Support (Linux, Android and Switch only)
• Added Rumble
• Android: Added Touchpad Support
• Android: New L1/L2/R1/R2 Buttons and added L3/R3 Buttons
• Android: Added Touch Button Haptic Feedback
• Android: Extended Touch Areas for Buttons
• Android: Fixed Micro-stuttering
• Prefer fixed local Port for Discovery
• Switch: Fixed audio delay
• Added DualSense to Setsu (requires hid-playstation Linux driver)

As long as your home network is good, Chiaki can give you a really nice experience to stream games from your console hardware to your Linux box. Nice to have as many options as possible, especially when Sony don't support their official bits for it on Linux directly.

You can find it here .

One of the features Google talked about early with Stadia is finally coming and that is State Share. Allowing players to share specific playable moments of captures and it's launching with HITMAN 3 . This is another tick in the box, finally, of nearly all the features promised by Google for Stadia well over a year after launch.

It sounds like a pretty fun system too, with the Stadia team saying it "turns a normal image or video capture into a portal to a unique game experience" and that "By embedding a game state within each capture, sharing gameplay for others to watch is transformed into a chance to try a playable slice of the game yourself. Each game state is defined by specific gameplay elements like player loadout, objectives, and difficulty, and trying each one is as easy as clicking a link".

Mechanically simple for actual users too which is the important part. Needing you to only capture a shot or video using Stadia's built-in features, allowing you to then (in supported games) turn it into a State Share link to send onto anyone else. From there, people with the link can then jump into the action at that moment if they own the game on Stadia. Each game will vary on what exactly it does.

For HITMAN 3 the Save State will allow:

• Mission starting location within the beginning of the level
• Mission objectives
• Player loadout (including weapon, gear, and clothing)
• Mission difficulty

State Share will be supported in HITMAN 3 as the first title on Stadia when it launches on January 20. The Stadia team expect more titles to support it through 2021.

For the Stadia users amongst our readership: two more big name games will be heading to the Linux and Vulkan powered game streaming service this month. Interestingly, both of which outside of Stadia will be Epic Games Store exclusives and will not be available on Steam.

First up is Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game - Complete Edition , this updated re-release of a much loved 2010 title comes after the original was delisted from all platforms back in 2014. It releases for Stadia on January 14 for $14.99 / €14.99 / £14.99.

Watch video on YouTube.com

For Linux users, Stadia continues to be an interesting option since Epic don't support Linux at all. At least with Stadia, it's supported directly on any system that can run Chrome (also works with other Chromium based browsers).

We'll be back with more Stadia news when we have it.