Google abandons effort to create video games less than 2 years after it was announced

• After less than two years, Google is closing its video-game studio, Stadia Games & Entertainment.
• Jade Raymond, who helped create the "Assassin's Creed" franchise, led the project.
• Google said it would continue to support its gaming platform, Stadia.

Google is ending its ambitious project to create large-scale video games as part of its Google Stadia video-game platform, the company announced on Monday.

Google's Stadia Games & Entertainment division, headed up by the game-industry veteran Jade Raymond, is shuttering. Raymond will also leave the company.

"We've decided that we will not be investing further in bringing exclusive content from our internal development team SG&E, beyond any near-term planned games," Google Stadia Vice President Phil Harrison said in a blog post. "With the increased focus on using our technology platform for industry partners, Jade Raymond has decided to leave Google to pursue other opportunities."

It's unclear if any layoffs are planned for Google's internal game-development studio, but Google said "most" of that team would be "moving on to new roles." About 150 employees across two game studios in Los Angeles and Montreal are affected, according to a Kotaku report.

Though Google spent years developing the video-game-streaming technology at the heart of its Stadia platform, it has been less than two years since Google formally launched the platform at the 2019 Game Developers Conference.

At that event, a group of Google execs laid out plans for the future of the platform.

"Stadia will be a driving force defining the future of games and entertainment," Raymond said in March 2019.

Harrison cited the increasing cost of video-game development as a reason Google was shuttering its game-development studio.

"Creating best-in-class games from the ground up takes many years and significant investment, and the cost is going up exponentially," Harrison wrote. Google has yet to release any first-party games on the Stadia platform.