Google Stadia faces class-action lawsuit over claims of 4K quality

Along with id Software and Bungie, Google is facing a class-action lawsuit over claims of 4K quality offered by its game streaming service Stadia.

A detailed 42-page document shows statements and tweets of people representing the mentioned companies.

One statement comes from the Stadia presentation by Google CEO Sundar Pichai in 2019. He said Stadia is more powerful than both Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro combined. Both console do provide up to 4K at 60 fps resolution. Later in 2019, Google kept mentioning games on Stadia would play at 4K resolution. Another statement is that Stadia is more powerful in a GPU teraflops comparison.

Also, id Software Executive Producer Marty Stratton said at GDC that Doom Eternal would be released on Stadia with 4K resolution and HDR at 60 fps. The same statement was made on Twitter via the @Doom account.

DOOM Eternal is coming to #Stadia.

4K with HDR ✅
60fps ✅#GoogleGDC19 https://t.co/6YBdOhHhNV

— DOOM (@DOOM) March 19, 2019

Once the title was launched, gaming media noticed Doom Eternal didn’t deliver true 4K, according to Gamespot.

The document also states Bungie did nothing to correct Google about “misleading statements” related to 4K/60 gameplay in Destiny 2.

A statement on Twitter by Phil Harrison also explains how Stadia gets its 4K/60 resolution. “We want all games to play 4K/60 but sometimes for artistic reasons a game is 4K/30 so Stadia always streams at 4K/60 via 2x encode.”

Yes, all games at launch support 4K. We designed Stadia to enable 4K/60 (with appropriate TV and bandwidth). We want all games to play 4K/60 but sometimes for artistic reasons a game is 4K/30 so Stadia always streams at 4K/60 via 2x encode.

— Phil Harrison (@MrPhilHarrison) October 9, 2019

The entire document can be read here: https://www.classaction.org/media/shepherd-v-google-llc-et-al.pdf – [Archive].

[Source]: PC Gamer: Stadia’s 4K gaming claims come back to haunt it in class-action lawsuit – [Archive].