NVIDIA’s GeForce Now game streaming service exited beta in February, allowing subscribers to access a library of games in the cloud and stream to any supported device (including computers, smartphones, or NVIDIA Shield devices).

A week later, Activision Blizzard announced it was pulling its games from the service. Now a bunch of other publishers have announced they’re following suit — NVIDIA says games from Warner Bros, XBOX Game Studios, Codemasters, and Klei Entertainment will be removed on April 24, 2020.

This follow similar moves by Bethesda and 2K Games, which also removed their games from the platform last month.

GeForce Now is different from other game streaming platforms like Google’s Stadia or Microsoft’s Project xCloud, because the idea is that instead of paying for the games, you’re paying for access to the game streaming platform itself.

Subscribers pay $5 per month and then they can stream titles they’ve already purchased and added to their Steam libraries. What the subscription gets you is the ability to play games you’ve already paid for on any supported device by streaming from NVIDIA’s servers with no need to use a gaming PC.

Theoretically this model means that NVIDIA doesn’t need permission from game publishers to let you stream their games. But in practice, if a publisher asks the company to end support for their titles, NVIDIA does so — which is probably a good way to avoid a legal battle.

NVIDIA notes that it will be “adding and removing games” through the end of May.

That said, not every game publisher is asking NVIDIA to pull their games. NVIDIA says it’s “working to bring over 1,500 more games to the service” soon, and that:

  • 30 of the 40 most-played games on Steam are supported.
  • More Ubisoft titles are on the way,including the complete Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry series.
  • New “Game Ready on GeForce Now” releases will be added every Thursday with large sets of games coming in April and May.

via The Verge

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,543 other subscribers

3 replies on “More game publishers pull titles from NVIDIA’s GeForce Now game streaming platform”

  1. Every gaming company trying this kind of crap deserves to be boycotted.

    If “boycott” is even the right word, when they’re trying to remove the customer’s ability to play games they already purchased for reasons that amount to “I think we can get more money somehow.”

    1. Man, practically every corporation I know of deserves to be boycotted out of existence. That’s obviously not happening because too many have found ways to make people dependent on their services or grew “too big to fail”.
      I suppose that carries the implication that everyone, including me and you, deserves to die of starvation once there’s little motivation and greatly reduced access to resources needed to grow food. But things are wrong enough that even that might be just.
      …In any case, this is why I try to have myself not depend on services as much as possible (within my pathetically limited ability). When you own something, it can’t be taken from you arbitrarily.

      1. Exactly.
        Everything has ulterior motives now, to get you to spend more money AND intrude on your privacy by stealing your meta/data. If you take “harsh” measures, that only balances the equation into normalcy. To really get invisible and financially free, it requires more extraordinary measures (ie Librem Phone).

        For games and tech: Never pre-order, always check (unbiased) reviews, buy when cheap, and get physical copies is now the de facto modus for consumers.

        Sheep are the ones who rely on services, buy on impulse, participate in pre-orders, and fall for fake/biased reviews.

        A fool and his money…

Comments are closed.