Google Stadia is expanding to support new regions

Google Stadia is expanding to new regions, according to a report from 9 to 5 Google. The cybersleuths over there dug into the meat of the new software update and discovered a few interesting things.

The version 4.26 update is rolling out a ‘Claim All’ button. Like most subscription based game streaming services, Stadia offers access to new titles every month. Stadia Pro subscribers, until now, had to manually accept each new offering, title by title. 

So this is big news for anyone, like me, who doesn’t have enough self control to only claim what they want. If I see free, I must claim everything. It’s a curse.

The new update is also adding some language compatibility. On the back of the announcement a few months ago that Google Stadia is going to be available in Mexico, Mexican Spanish support is being added to the platform. What’s also being added, though, is Spanish support for Latin America, as well as Caribbean Spanish support.

To be clear, there’s no reason people in Mexico, Latin America or the Carribean couldn’t use Stadia before. It just depended on those people speaking one of the already supported languages. The availability was already there. Now the access is just official and streamlined.

Where Stadia isn’t available at all is Turkey or Cyprus, which makes the final language pack a bit interesting. The 4.26 update is adding support for Turkish alongside all of the Spanish updates.

You could do it, but it was messy

Google Stadia defaults to the language of a user’s google account. It’s a simple workaround for players in regions of the world who want to use Stadia, but can’t. You just set up a google account in a supported language. In regions where it isn’t supported a VPN was also a critical step — otherwise trying to connect would error out.

Even if you did all the running around required to actually play Stadia, you still had to deal with latency issues. The distance to data centers is extremely important, especially when dealing with cloud streaming.

Hopefully the inclusion of these new languages means new data centers. And adding support for more countries is always good, regardless of the service.