Google Stadia pop-up shops will spring up in London, LA, and Paris next week

Google is taking its streaming service Stadia on the road, with public demonstrations popping up across the world.

As well as a pop-up shop in Los Angeles and Paris, the roadshow will also stop off in London between 12pm-8pm at Boxpark in Shoreditch on December 11th, 2019.

“Been wondering what it’s like to play games on Stadia?” Google said by way of a press release. “Now’s your chance. Starting next week, we’re bringing Stadia to select cities… and you’re invited. At the Stadia Holiday Pop-Ups visitors can get Stadia swag, enjoy holiday snacks, mingle with YouTube Creators, and most importantly, play some games with Stadia!”

In LA, the shop will pop up at Hollywood and Highland at 6801 Hollywood Blvd on December 11th, and it’ll visit Webedia Millenium at 2 rue Paul Vaillant in Paris on December 13th, 2019. All shops are open from 12pm-8pm local time.

It’s not been a flawless rollout for Google’s new service. Google acknowledged “an issue” delayed the dissemination of invitation codes to early adopters of its streaming service, Stadia, which officially launched last week. In some cases, players have already received their packs but were unable to use it without the invitation code.  

Though the issue purportedly only affected “a small fraction” of preorders, a number of customers reported that despite ordering the Founders’ Edition when preorders went live, orders were not shipped in order and they had yet to receive correspondence from Google inviting them to register their gamertag/nickname several days after launch – even though this was widely advertised as a perk of the Founder’s Edition. 

Just days before its launch, Google confirmed a number of key features originally detailed to early adopters of Google’s streaming subscription service will now be delayed. Further to a Reddit AMA with Google’s Andrey Doronichev and Beri Lee, it was confirmed Stadia’s Founder’s Edition would launch without achievement notifications, family share, or 4K streaming for PC. It’s also been confirmed that the much-publicised Buddy Pass – which enables players to gift access to a friend – will be delayed for approximately three months.

Google recently responded to criticism that its Stadia streaming service is failing to meet consumer expectations after it was advertised that all Stadia games at launch would support 4K and said the onus was on developers to “continue to improve their games on Stadia”. It also recently agreed to refund Google Stadia players who purchased Farming Simulator and/or Tomb Raider Definitive Edition ahead of news both games would be available for “free” to Pro subscribers as part of a promotion in December.