Stadia Pro is now free to play for two months says Google

Google Stadia — Stadia Pro is now free for two months (pic: Google)

Google is offering everyone the chance to play their video game streaming service for free during the coronavirus outbreak, starting now.

Although it’s already lead to some delays, and there will likely be more to come, the coronavirus pandemic does create an opportunity for video games companies, in that suddenly the majority of the population are stuck at home with nothing to do.

As recognition of that, Google has announced that their subscription service Stadia Pro will be free to use for the next two months, starting today, 8 April.

Although you’ll be able to sign up to the service for free you’ll still have to buy the games separately. But luckily Stadia Pro does have a collection of nine free games, including Grid, Destiny 2: The Collection, and Thumper.

The service is usually £8.99 a month and once you sign up you’ll be on an auto-renewal subscription, so you’ll want to turn that off here if you don’t want to start getting charged at the end of the free period.

There was to have been a permanently free version of the service launched this year, called Stadia Base, but there’s been no mention of that for a while now and it sounds like it certainly won’t be launching any time soon.

The free offer is a great opportunity to try out the streaming technology though and see how well it works with your broadband connection.

However, because of everyone being in lockdown, Google has purposefully dropped the default screen resolution from 4K to 1080p, as many other service have in order to not use up unnecessary bandwidth.

There’s been considerable controversy over whether Stadia games really are running at true 4K though, so you won’t be missing out on much.