AT&T Wireless has launched a rather odd perk for customers: a free-to-play Batman: Arkham Knight cloud version. What's even more surprising, however, is that it appears to be powered by Google Stadia.
Batman: Arkham Knight first launched quite a few years ago and things didn't exactly go all that smoothly -- it had tons of technical problems at launch. These issues ultimately led to Warner Brothers addressing player concerns and ultimately offering refunds to PC players a few days later.
The issues with the game have since been smoothed out. A recent surprising development, however, had Batman: Arkham Knight at the center of it: AT&T Wireless began offering a free-to-play streaming version of the game to its customers. What's even more interesting, however, is that the Batman: Arkham Knight cloud version appears to be powered by Google Stadia technology according to a new report.
How the Batman: Arkham Knight Cloud Version is Powered by Google Stadia Behind the Scenes
9to5Google reports that the Batman: Arkham Knight cloud version offered to AT&T Wireless customers is apparently by Google Stadia tech. You won't find Stadia branding anywhere in the game or on its offer page, but their investigation revealed that Stadia appears to serve as the backbone for this project.
There are three key clues that Stadia is actually powering this experience. First, clicking on the "Play Now For Free" button on the web page launches an experience that looks very similar to Stadia's web browser streaming (albeit in a lighter theme). 9to5Google dug a bit deeper and discovered web requests that connect to Google's servers are also being used. Furthermore, these web requests mention "cloudcast" -- an internal code name for Stadia.
The suspicions about Stadia tech were later confirmed by an AT&T representative speaking to 9to5Google. As with other Stadia titles, it's also running on Linux just like every other Stadia game; notably, Batman: Arkham Knight has not yet received a native Linux release (and likely never will).
"[…] this is being powered by the Stadia technology," read a portion of the statement from an AT&T representative. "For this demo AT&T created a front end experience to enable gamers to play Batman Arkham Knight directly from their own website and the game is playable on virtually any computer or laptop."
So why is this all being done behind the scenes? Well, as anyone who followed Google Stadia knows, the service (and the division of Google behind it) hasn't been doing all that well lately. Google shuttered its internal game developers earlier this year, and several key executives such as John Justice left the company or transferred elsewhere internally.
The Batman: Arkham Knight cloud version appears to be a part of the effort to work with third-party developers to use Stadia tech for Cloud gaming in interesting ways, an initiative that was announced earlier this year. AT&T Wireless customers can play the game for free on its website; otherwise, you can buy the game on Steam or for consoles via its official website. It is not, however, available on Google Stadia's store.
What do you think of Google Stadia being used behind the scenes for the Batman: Arkham Knight cloud version? What other games do you think would be a good fit for streaming? Let us know in the comments below!
