Next week, Google’s Stadia cloud gaming service will roll out an exclusive feature: the ability to share and jump into a saved game state via a URL link.
The feature, dubbed State Share, arrives on Jan. 20 alongside the launch of Hitman 3 and will be available as part of the Hitman World of Assassination trilogy.
The feature will let you share your current state in the game—including the stage, character location, item configuration, and difficulty—with other players on the Stadia service simply by generating and then passing them a URL link.
The feature will work through Stadia's image/video capture function. Essentially, every capture you make can act as a portal for other players to instantly enjoy the same experience.
“So it’s really as easy as saving a capture on Stadia and sharing the link with friends, viewers, or followers so they can click to launch the game and play for themselves,” Stadia Product Manager Catherine Hsiao said in today’s announcement. “Even if you haven’t unlocked certain weapons or items in Hitman 3, you’ll be able to experience them with State Share at the click of a link, without affecting your own progression in-game."
Since before it launched, Stadia has been talking up the State Share feature as a way to stand out in the gaming space. “Creators can live stream a game and share a link to their game state for viewers to try for themselves, or even try game states shared by their viewers live on stream,” Hsiao said.
However, State Share will only be available for games that’ve been designed to support it. It’ll also be up to the developer on what gameplay elements will carry over with each save. So we'll have to wait and see if other game makers embrace it.