Stadia offers 70% revenue share on Stadia Pro subscriptions

Google has announced a new revenue share model for Stadia Pro that will give all partnered developers an extra source of income from the service every month. The scheme is coming into effect at the end of the month, giving these developers a share of the revenue generated from Stadia Pro subscriptions, which costs £8.99 per month per user.

Google itself described this as an industry-leading share, which it likely is. Considering that Valve and other storefronts charge developers 30 percent of all revenues from sales, a share in the money from subscriptions could go much further.

The split for Stadia Pro subscription revenue will be based on the number of session days that users have spent on these games. Stadia Pro offers a number of free games to users, so it’s the developers and publishers of these games that will benefit from the share. If more users play a certain game, the parties connected to it will be paid more.

A user only has to play a game once per day for it to count as multiple session days. Multiple play sessions in the same day don’t count as multiple session days though.

When it comes to the games sold through Stadia, Google is also shifting how it works. Users need to buy games through the service, and now Google will be paying 85 percent of all sales revenue directly to developers from October 1, 2021. This split will be applied to the first $3 million generated, and is set to end in 2023, when it will revert back to the current split.

Lastly, Google announced an affiliate marketing program for Stadia Pro which is said to launch next year. Within this scheme, developers will generate $10 for every user they convert to a Stadia Pro subscriber. This will function through specialized URLs that each developer has access to, and will offer free trials of Stadia Pro to users. Developers will get paid if those users then convert to paying members.

Stadia is a service that has been through the ringer since it launched. After codes weren’t correctly distributed at launch, users have had a tough time understanding why they should bother using the service over their other platforms. With this news, it seems like Google has finally understood that Stadia should be more of a tool for making games accessible instead of killing consoles.