Google Stadia has officially closed down.

The tech giant's video game cloud based venture - which launched in November 2019 - is no longer live, with the team sharing a message on Wednesday (18.01.23) evening hours before the shutdown, which went into effect earlier on Thursday morning in the UK.

The team tweeted: "To our players and partners, our team, community and fans: thank you, for everything.

"As of 11:59pm PT today, we're signing off from the cloud. Y'all be good to each other, and stay safe out there."

In a statement back in September, Google confirmed it was shutting down its gaming service after just three years struggling to gain "the traction" with gamers it had hoped for.

Writing in a blog post, Stadia's Vice President and General Manager, Phil Harrison, said: "For many years, Google has invested across multiple aspects of the gaming industry. We help developers build and distribute gaming apps on Google Play and Google Play Games.

"Gaming creators are reaching audiences around the world on YouTube through videos, live streaming and Shorts. And our cloud streaming technology delivers immersive gameplay at massive scale.

"A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia. And while Stadia's approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service."