'Terraria' creator kills Stadia plans after Google locked his accounts

Despite being a solid gaming alternative (especially for Cyberpunk 2077), Stadia's self-inflicted woes continue to mount this month. Early last week, Google's video game streaming service announced the shuttering of its in-house development studio without ever releasing a single title and now it can't seem to keep third-party games on board. Last night, game developer Andrew Spinks posted on Twitter that he intends to end plans to port the ultra-popular indie sandbox, Terraria, onto Stadia after Google apparently locked all his accounts for no discernible reason.

Completely blocked without explanation — "My account has now been disabled for over 3 weeks. I still have no idea why, and after using every resource I have to get this resolved [Google] has done nothing but given me the runaround," Spinks tweeted earlier today, going on to say that he's lost thousands of dollars worth of apps via GooglePlay. Spinks says he is locked out of both his GoogleDrive data as well as YouTube channel.

"The worst of all is losing access to my @gmail address of over 15 years," he added. In response, Spinks announced his decision to pull the plug on plans for Terraria's release on Stadia, as well as "no longer support any of [Google's] platforms moving forward."

No response or explanation — Spinks' problems with Google have been brewing for a couple weeks now. As IGN reports, Terraria's YouTube account was suddenly disabled at the end of January, and subsequent attempts to contact the company via the video game's official Twitter account went unanswered. There didn't appear to be any egregious content violations going on (and it's not like Terraria is in any way controversial game), so the account suspensions are strange, to say the least. Most likely, the error was on Google's part, but the inability to communicate with customers — especially those as successful as Terraria — is a pretty embarrassing lapse.

As of right now, it's unclear just how much this will affect other game developers' decisions to work with Google and Stadia.

Terraria, while extremely popular, is far from a major studio release, but that doesn't mean bigger outlets won't take note of Google's faux pas. That said, given that Stadia appears to be shifting to rely solely on third-party titles for its streaming catalog, this definitely isn't the kind of publicity it needs right now.