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Google reportedly paid $20m for Ubisoft ports on Stadia

Take-Two was also paid "tens of millions of dollars" for Red Dead Redemption 2 and NBA 2K

A new report has offered more insight into the significant figures Google was pouring into securing third-party content for its Stadia streaming service.

Bloomberg spoke to anonymous sources close to the deals, who claims Google spent "tens of millions of dollars" on getting major publishers such as Ubisoft and Take-Two to bring some of their biggest games to Stadia.

The report's author, Jason Schreier, offered more context via Twitter, clarifying that this was tens of millions of dollars for each port.

In another tweet, Schreier suggested Google paid "$20 million to Ubisoft to port Assassin's Creed and The Division."

He added that Take-Two Interactive, which had Red Dead Redemption 2 and NBA 2K20 available on Stadia at launch was also "raking it in."

The report follows the recent news that Google closed Stadia Games and Entertainment, the studio responsible for making exclusive titles that showed off the full potential and promised features of the streaming service.

While Stadia will continue, Google is also focusing on offering the tech to other games publishers.

We discussed the implications of the closure for Stadia on a recent episode of The GamesIndustry.biz Podcast, as well as re-examined the marketing around its original announcement and suggested how Google could have better positioned Stadia from the beginning.

Last week, news emerged that a class-action lawsuit has been filed against Google, Bungie and id Software over the unfulfilled promises made around Stadia and its games.

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James Batchelor avatar
James Batchelor: James is Editor-in-Chief at GamesIndustry.biz, and has been a B2B journalist since 2006. He is author of The Best Non-Violent Video Games
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