Search and ads giant Google is making some changes to how revenue sharing works on its Stadia streaming service.

During a keynote event yesterday (Tuesday, July 13th), the firm said that from the end of July, companies behind games in the Stadia Pro subscription tier will receive a split of revenue generated from this tier.

Google will be giving developers and publishers a slice from 70 per cent of cash made from this level of subscription, depending on how many "session days" people have spent playing their games. A session day is someone playing a Stadia Pro title once a day, which seems like something that could be easily manipulated.

Furthermore, developers will receive 85 per cent of revenue for games sold on the Stadia Store that are released after October 1st. This only applies to the first $3 million in revenue that a game generates, when the split reverts to its "current split," whatever that is.

Stadia has had a rocky time since its launch in November 2019. At the start of 2021, Google announced that it was closing down its first-party Stadia Games and Entertainment studios. This was apparently due to anxieties surrounding M&A activity in the sector, not least Microsoft snapping up ZeniMax Media. The head of Stadia's first-party division – Jade Raymond – also departed at this point.

In the wake of this news, there were reports that Stadia did not hit Google's expectations and that the firm splashed out huge sums of money to bring existing titles to the platform.

In May of this year, Google insisted that Stadia is "alive and well" in an interview with GI.biz.