Google Stadia is still around, might be hard to tell, as the service fell out of the public eye rather quickly after its launch November 2019. According to 9to5Google, they're still looking for ways to coerce customers into trying out their service, and their latest method is giving free 30 minute trials of games, with the first sample being available for Hello Engineer, one of two of the new games added to Google Stadia (yep, new games are still being added). Hello Engineer is a spin-off of the 2017 survival game Hello Neighbor. A community manager from Google confirmed on Reddit that the samples will be available for 30 minutes, even if you don't have a Stadia account.

Hi everyone,

I'm happy to confirm that we are testing free timed game trials on Stadia over the next couple of months. Today, we're starting with Hello Engineer, and in the coming weeks, we'll be enabling this experiment for select titles. The game trial for Hello Engineer will last 30 minutes and will even be playable without a Stadia account. However, the duration for each game may vary and these experiments will not be available for all users right now.

As always, please continue to use the post game surveys when available, so we can gauge how your experiences are.

Thanks everyone and happy gaming!

With Google Stadia's ability to instantly hop into a game with practically zero boot-up time, this does play to the service's strength. Google told The Verge that they will be adding more demos, but 30 minute trials will not apply to every game, and everyone might not have access to the same games. 

The process isn't very straightforward. I attempted to log in with my Google account to give the demo a go, as they ask, but was not sent immediately to the game. I had to click through the user license agreement, verify my email, and was prompted to sign up for Google Stadia's one month free trial. Seems like to try out the free sample from Stadia, you still have to sign up for Stadia. 

Demos aren't a bad idea, but I don't think this will be a true turnaround for the cloud service, maybe providing enough interest for people to peek in and see what's going on. But given the departures of Jade Raymond and most of their internal development team, along with Stadia's "it's up to the publishers" modus operandi for added content, Google's future with Stadia is an odd one. It seems to merely exist.

SOURCES: The Verge, Reddit, 9to5Google