Nvidia GeForce Now Loses More Games as Bethesda Pulls Out

By Andrew E. Freedman
published

Nvidia GeForce Now gets to keep Wolfenstein Youngblood, though.

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)

Bethesda Softworks is pulling the majority of its games from Nvidia's GeForce Now game streaming service. The company quietly announced the change in its forums, noting that one title, the RTX-enabled Wolfenstein Youngblood, will remain.

This continues a somewhat difficult launch for GeForce Now since its launched earlier this month. The service has also seen Activision Blizzard pull games in a high-profile move, while the removal of titles from Electronic Arts, Capcom, Rockstar Games and Square Enix occurred more quietly at launch.

As The Verge points out, Nvidia's Phil Eisler, vice president of GeForce Now, published a blog post yesterday, writing that publishers "maintain control over their content and decide whether the game you purchase includes streaming on GeForce NOW." He also suggested that some publishers may be returning games to the service, though didn't specify which studios or in what time frame.

"Game removals should be few and far between, with new games added to GeForce NOW each week," he added.

Earlier this week, Nvidia announced that Cyberpunk 2077 will stream on the service at launch, so there are more high-profile games coming.

Nvidia's model has people buy games on existing services like Steam and the Epic Games Store. In theory, that's friendly to gamers who may also want to play games on their own PCs. That's also different from Google Stadia, which requires you to buy the game through Google, so the game can only be played on the cloud service.

It appears that the games are being pulled as a result of licensing agreements, so users may see more changes as the service moves forward.

Andrew E. Freedman
Andrew E. Freedman

Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Twitter: @FreedmanAE

Topics
Nvidia
9 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jkflipflop98
    The whole idea just doesn't make sense. PC Gamers don't build big, fire-breathing, beastly gaming PCs so we can stream medium-quality games over the internet. I want to tinker with .cfg and .ini files to squeeze the most out of my personal system. If I'm out and about and want to stream games, I do it from my own gaming PC via steam streaming.

    There's a case to be made for services like PSnow because those are games we couldn't otherwise play without buying a Playstation. . . but streaming PC games is just a dumb idea.
    Reply
  • levijonesm
    jkflipflop98 said:
    There's a case to be made for services like PSnow because those are games we couldn't otherwise play without buying a Playstation. . . but streaming PC games is just a dumb idea.

    The same logic applies to gaming PCs. Not everyone has a beefy gaming PC. Some of us have laptops but love to play games.
    Reply
  • sc2lines
    All about .....The Money Game.....
    Reply
  • Giroro
    Big game publishers don't just want "a lot" of money, they want "all the money in the world".
    The overmonitization of the games industry is getting exhausting.

    I have the bad feeling that game publishers are pulling out because they hope to sell fresh digital licenses to people who already own the game digitally - even if you are the same person running the same software on the same system that you already bought the rights to use. The publishers will probably lie and act like its some kind of server fee or service fee, even though server fees and administrative costs will literally be what the nvidia subscription is paying for - because it's all being handled by Nvidia. The publishers are just taking away work that Nvidia already accomplished on their service, apparently without any publisher involvement.

    "with new games added to GeForce NOW each week, "
    So, what... they even start "releasing" these pulled clearly-already-working-PC-games a few at a time, like how Nintendo did when they released Virtual Console roms . I mean, at least ripping (or downloading) game ROMs then hosting them on their storefront took some token time effort on Nintendo's part.

    Or maybe they have some other nefarious ideas on how to get more money-extraction hooks in. Some kind of third-tier subscription fee that gets in the way of paying a subscription service (Nvidia) to use bandwidth from separate subscription services (ISPs, which is also a horrible mess with many layers of redundant charging, THANKS AJIT) ... all so you can run a PC game license on a PC, which you already bought though a service that is already portable between different PCs. It's just getting absolutely ridiculous.
    ...It makes me miss physical media that could run without 3 user accounts all connecting to various servers. Digital media is only worth it when it is more convinient, not less.

    Is Nvidia's service that just lets me locally stream a game running on my PC to my TV still a thing? That was a thing, right? That is most likely the way I would use GeForce Now, regardless.
    Reply
  • AnimeMania
    This has to effect the relationship between NVidia and the game developers right? If the game developers hold a grudge against NVidia , they will be less likely to partner together, support NVidia specific features, include or fix bugs in NVidia specific accelerators, etc.
    Reply
  • Gillerer
    Considering so many publishers are removing their games, I think this is some larger problem behind the scenes.

    Some ideas:
    Are publishers requiring Nvidia to license their games (for installing for users, and for use in promoting the platform)?
    Is Nvidia requiring kickbacks from publishers (for bringing in more PC players)?
    Is Nvidia requiring discounted game keys (wholesale) to sell to their subscribers?
    Is Nvidia requiring free or dirt-cheap game keys to award their subscribers with as a part of some loyalty scheme?
    Is Nvidia asking for support from publishers on their respective game titles, but publishers either not willing to provide it, or them not reaching an agreement on monetary compensation?
    Does Nvidia want games on the platform to work outside the publishers' usual frameworks (like Origin, Uplay, Battle.net)?
    Are publishers unhappy about their games' performance or latency on the service, and don't want players' view of their IP being tarnished by bad experiences?Once more than one of the above become issues in negotiations, I could easily see where they'd end up at a dead-end.

    Better for publishers to withdraw early - rather than when lots of people have had time to invest in the publisher's games on the assumption that they can play them on GeForce Now.
    Reply
  • Chung Leong
    jkflipflop98 said:
    There's a case to be made for services like PSnow because those are games we couldn't otherwise play without buying a Playstation. . . but streaming PC games is just a dumb idea.

    The service is designed for people who don't have a powerful video card. Basically, you'd sign up, buy a game, then realize that streaming is completely unsatisfactory. At this point you fall for the sunk-cost fallacy and go buy an Nvidia card in order to recoup your initial investment.
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    Gillerer said:
    Considering so many publishers are removing their games, I think this is some larger problem behind the scenes.
    Yep, it seems to me that Nvidia must have some questionable license agreement with the publishers that is turning them off in droves. While the service currently accesses game libraries from other storefronts, it seems likely that Nvidia may be planning to sell games themselves down the line, which may be where the disagreement lies. Maybe they intend to have a premium membership following a sort of Netflix model for games, where users gain access to streaming all games in Nvidia's library for a fixed monthly fee, and the publishers might only get a small portion of the money they would otherwise get for a game purchased on another platform. Whatever the reason, I suspect they will make changes to bring some of these publishers back, as the service becomes kind of useless without the games people want to play, and without some assurance that games people bought won't disappear from the service.

    Nvidia GeForce Now gets to keep Wolfenstein Youngblood, though.
    Incidently, Youngblood has the lowest user score of any Bethesda game on Metacritic. : P
    Reply
  • gggplaya
    Chung Leong said:
    The service is designed for people who don't have a powerful video card. Basically, you'd sign up, buy a game, then realize that streaming is completely unsatisfactory. At this point you fall for the sunk-cost fallacy and go buy an Nvidia card in order to recoup your initial investment.

    Streaming is perfectly fine for any uncompetitive style game. Games like Resident Evil, or other campaign games would be fine to stream. I see it as a viable option for people in dorms or traveling alot.
    Reply