Just last week, Nvidia took its GeForce Now game streaming service out of beta, but sadly it doesn't look like it's all fun and games. Multiple parties have slowly been pulling their games from the service. The latest of these parties is Activision Blizzard, whose entire library is being removed from GeForce Now.
"Per their request, please be advised Activision Blizzard games will be removed from the service," an Nvidia staff member said on the GeForce Now Forum. "While unfortunate, we hope to work together with Activision Blizzard to reenable these games and more in the future."
Activision Blizzard isn't the first to pull its support. Games from Capcom, EA, Konami, Remedy, Rockstar and Square Enix that were available with the beta were not available when the public version launched last week.
"As we take GeForce Now to the next step in its evolution, we’ve worked with publishers to onboard a robust catalog of your PC games," the Nvidia staff member said. "This means continually adding new games, and on occasion, having to remove games – similar to other digital service providers."
That basically means that as with any streaming service, like Netflix, content is continuously added but also sometimes removed.
But unlike other streaming services, you don't pay a big monthly fee for GeForce Now in order access its entire catalog of games. Rather, you take your existing library and play it on GeForce Now by paying a small monthly fee. Essentially, you're only renting the computer power and not the licensing for the game.
Consequently, publishers removing their libraries from GeForce Now support is a particularly sour event for people who may have purchased games with the intent of running them on GeForce Now, since their system doesn't have the gaming capabilities. Such customers now own copies of games that they're unable to play.
At the time of writing, there is no clear information as to why so many developers have opted out GeForce Now. One would think that by participating, devs have access to a larger group of people, but it appears that something is pushing them away. Reasons could include a problem with user agreements, or some games simply not being ready to properly run on the service yet.
Regardless, if GeForce Now becomes a service known for having inconsistent game support, there could be dire consequences. Who wants to buy a game if there's a chance that a month from now you won't be able to play it anymore? For now, we'll hope that Nvidia sorts things out with game studios so that these launch woes don't turn into long-term characteristics.
