(upbeat music)
Hi, everyone.
Thank you so much for joining the Stadia Keynote today
at the 2021 Google for Games Developer Summit.
I’m so happy to be here, and I’m very excited about our announcements.
Today we’re focusing solely on Stadia game partners,
both developers and publishers,
so no cool game announcements or trailers are part of this presentation.
My name is Careen Yapp.
I work on the Stadia Business Development Team
and I've spent the last 20 years working to acquire content
from some of the most amazing teams in this industry.
I started at THQ back when PlayStation 2 was considered next-gen,
and then worked with D3 publisher, Konami, Gaikai,
and now I'm here at Google.
Thank you so much for joining us. I wish you were here in person.
As with any good story, we’d like to take a look back
at where we've been before we look at what's to come.
We also have two other sessions today.
Both will go into more detail about our announcements.
So please join the sessions so you don't miss out on any information.
The Stadia story began long before our first public unveil in 2018.
We started with the simple yet challenging goal of proving
that Google could deliver high-resolution visuals to gamers
with incredibly low latency using Google technology.
The first public reveal of this technology was in October 2018
with a launch of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey from the incomparable team at Ubisoft.
It was called simply Project Stream.
It was the first time a user could play, day and date,
a remarkable, low-latency, AAA game streaming experience from any laptop.
We then went on to publicly announce Stadia at GDC in March 2019.
We painted a bold vision for the future of streaming AAA games
across any connected device without the need for local physical hardware.
Thank you to every one of our partners for working with us.
We look forward to continuing to work with you
and with the rest of the industry on this journey.
Next was the launch of Stadia in November of 2019,
where gamers were able to play Stadia for themselves on their own connected devices.
Throughout 2020, we worked to deliver on the original promise of Stadia
by adding a multitude of platform features.
Highlights include CrowdPlay, which gives players the ability
to jump right into the multiplayer game they’re watching on YouTube;
Crowd Choice where viewers can make game decisions for the YouTube creators
streaming the game they’re watching;
and free game demos, where, in October of last year,
we enabled viewers to watch a trailer for an unreleased game, click a link,
and then instantly try that game.
Remember, anyone in a Stadia-supported country
can use their Gmail account to sign up for Stadia for free,
click to claim a game and click to play a game on wide range of connected devices
without the need to purchase additional hardware.
Late last year, we worked with the phenomenal developers at CD Projekt Red
and brought to streaming one of the most expansive games ever developed:
Cyberpunk 2077.
It was so exciting for the Stadia team to hear the collective feedback.
Stadia was one of the best places to play one of the year’s biggest games.
Thanks to the efforts of our content team,
Stadia is also the home of the Stadia Makers program
built specifically to help smaller game development teams join the Stadia family
and empower them to reach players in new ways.
Our Makers community has launched so many creative and unique games
including Hundred Days, Kaze & the Wild Masks,
Darkside Detective and Unto The End to name a few.
These Makers games are available now on Stadia
with even more great games coming soon.
If you’re interested in being part of the Stadia development community,
head on over to Stadia.dev and apply.
It’s these kinds of creative and innovative concepts from the Stadia Makers community
that inspire our team each and every day.
Thank you to all of our Stadia Makers partners.
We look forward to expanding this community, and we have announcements
coming up later in the session I think you’re really going to like.
As always and definitely in my opinion, partners are a crucial part of Stadia.
Please know that we are constantly working
to improve your experience, to bring games to our platform
and we have more details around new tools and other improvements
to share in our technical session later today.
To date, our partners have shipped more than 180 games on Stadia.
These titles support all types of business models
from free to play to transactional to game demos
playable anywhere in the 22 countries that Stadia supports.
And now they're playable on more devices than ever before.
Today you can access Stadia on no less than hundreds
of millions of devices currently in the market.
Anything from computers to Android and iOS phones,
to tablets, to a growing list of TVs,
thanks to our new Android TV support.
The numbers of devices will continue to expand
with smart TVs joining the list later this year.
The team at Stadia is working very hard to expand our footprint,
grow the addressable Stadia market
and deliver on Google's goal of democratizing access
to great gameplay experiences for everyone.
One of the ways Stadia continues to make games more accessible and easier to play
is through a one-month free trial of Stadia Pro.
Stadia Pro is our monthly subscription service
that allows subscribers to access a variety of great games
with new titles added every month.
It's one of the benefits our players love about Stadia.
Recently, we’ve asked ourselves, how can we ensure
partners benefit more readily from our subscription?
And here’s where things get more exciting.
Starting this month, any new title that enters into Stadia Pro
under the new Stadia Pro terms
will earn a slice of monthly revenue from the service.
Stadia Pro will give back 70% of monthly revenue
to partners based upon engagement for active claimable Stadia Pro titles.
To make this as easy as possible, engagement will be measured by session days,
one user playing one Stadia Pro game twice on day one equals one session day.
A user that plays a Stadia Pro game once on day one and once on day two
equals two session days.
We're also unveiling a new way to power player engagement
through our Affiliate Marketing Program.
As a digital-only platform, Stadia has a unique ability
to generate a link to a partner’s game and provide data for how that link performs
and the players it brings to Stadia and to the game.
We call it a Click-to-Play link.
Players can click on your unique Click-to-Play link
and play the great games available in Stadia Pro
during the free trial we offer to all new users.
Once that player converts from a free Stadia Pro trial to a paid Pro subscription,
you'll get $10 per user from Stadia or the local currency equivalent.
This in addition to your slice of the Stadia Pro monthly revenue.
No other game platform does this,
and we are very excited to offer our Affiliate Marketing Program
to our partners in the first half of next year.
Alan Joyce, a Stadia product manager, and one of my favorite members of the team
has a session later today called “Growing the Pie” where he’ll detail
how we’re using Click-to-Play technology to enable this program.
You're not gonna want to miss it.
Last but certainly not least is an important announcement
about games available for purchase on the Stadia Store.
Starting in Q4 this calendar year,
we're launching a limited time incentive program
that adjusts our revenue share for newly signed games to an 85/15 split
for game sales up to a $3 million threshold.
This will apply to all games launching in Q4 of this year and in 2022 and in 2023.
That means you as a Stadia partner
will earn 85% of your title sales and Google will earn 15.
Once your title's total sales reach a $3 million threshold,
the revenue share will revert back to the current split.
So that's good news from a revenue generating perspective
but in order to access these new partner incentives
you first need to develop your game for Stadia.
The Stadia team has gathered a lot of feedback
from partners to ensure we continue to build new tools
and functionality to make development, submission,
and certification of the Stadia title easier than ever
and we are constantly improving this process.
Over the past year, we’ve invested in simplifying certification for all partners.
We're creating easier workflows to test across
all of Stadia endpoints with our new Test Hub tool.
We're decoupling certain pieces of the developer journey
so that teams can work independently from one another
and we're continually investing both time
and resources to improve our support of game engines, whether custom or licensed,
our goal is to make Stadia development as close to turnkey as possible.
There's a great session coming up later in the day
that we'll dig into more detail of the technical work in progress
featuring more of my favorite team members, Elisabeth, Ryan, and Robert.
Please make sure to catch this one if you'd like more information.
Both of our Stadia sessions will provide important details
about everything we've been working on.
The reason we've done all this great work,
the reason I’m here today talking to you is that we know.
We know games are what make a platform great and we want your games to come to Stadia.
To apply to be a Stadia developer, go to Stadia.dev, our developer website.
When you click to apply on Stadia.dev,
you’ll first fill out a two-page application form.
This request can seem pretty basic but it's crucial information
that goes directly to the Stadia review team and to me
and it helps us prioritize your requests, so please don’t take it lightly.
So a quick recap: We’re working hard to continually improve Stadia
for our players and for our partners.
Our platform, user adoption and user sentiment are all growing and improving.
We want you as a partner, and we want to play your games on our platform,
so please go to Stadia.dev to find out more and apply to become a Stadia partner.
Thank you very much.
(upbeat music)