Nvidia Kills Off GameStream Feature On Shield Devices

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A huge blow to Nvidia Shield device owners

Nvidia Shield TV Pro
Nvidia Shield TV Pro (Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia has emailed Shield owners that the chipmaker has decided to discontinue the GameStream feature. The company will push out an update to Shield devices starting mid-February, where GameStream will no longer be available. The news will certainly not bode well with consumers who recently picked up a Shield device during the Black Friday sales.

If you're not acquainted with Nvidia's GameStream functionality, it's a feature that allows Shield TV or Shield tablet to stream their favorite titles from a GeForce GTX-powered computer. The chipmaker had previously updated GameStream to support framerates up to 60 FPS at 4K (3840 x 2160) resolution.

Nvidia didn't share the reason why it's pulling the plug on GameStream. However, the chipmaker invited Shield users to give GeForce Now a try. GeForce Now is Nvidia's cloud streaming service, available free of charge if you're willing to live with significant limitations. The priority package costs $9.99 a month, whereas RTX 3080 tier will set you back $19.99. Nvidia also recommended Valve's Steam Link as a replacement for GameStream. Of course, AMD Link is also out there, which supports non-AMD devices.

Nvidia will disable GameStream in the form of an update to the Nvidia Games app. Shield owners could ignore the update, and GameStream will likely work for a while beyond the grace period. However, it will eventually stop working, and other services, such as GeForce Now, will require users to update the app to continue their functions. It would appear that another developer team has hooked up with the Moonlight team to create Sunshine, which poses to be an open-source GameStream host and could be a viable option for when GameStream is gone.

A Redditor has shared Nvidia's email, which you can read below.

Starting in mid-February, a planned update to the NVIDIA Games app will begin rolling out to SHIELD owners. With this update, the GameStream feature will no longer be available. SHIELD users can continue to use GameStream until that time. Visit our FAQ for more information.

SHIELD users can stream games from their PC using the free Steam Link app. Visit the Steam Link site to learn more.

We also invite you to stream PC games from the cloud using NVIDIA GeForce NOW.

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Zhiye Liu
Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • atomicWAR
    Part of me wants to call out Nvidia hard as streaming was a strong selling point for shield devices but there are other options in the Play store these days for streaming. Still it is in bad form and streaming was one of the reasons I bought into a shield handheld/tablet back in the day...never got onboard with the set-a-top box version for TVs and thus no longer run shield devices due to their age as batteries have died, been replaced and died again for good. Those running the set-a-top box must be irked. Its OLD hardware though to be fair. Nvidia needs a proper refresh at this point.
    Reply
  • 3tank
    Wow- i dodged a bullet there. I was so tempted before and was ready to get one this week but now will certainly not.
    Thanks fpr the report
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    Now I am -very- glad I didn't buy one, which I had in my Amazon cart...
    Reply
  • JTWrenn
    Recurring revenue is almost all these companies care about now, because all they care about is money...not making good products to get the money. So many things don't require a damn recurring subscription because they don't need cloud to do these things and gamestream was one of them. Glad Steam...so far...has been less insane about this stuff.
    Reply
  • Unolocogringo
    I smell a major lawsuit. Removing functionality after the fact ?
    💩
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    "Nvidia didn't share the reason why it's pulling the plug on GameStream. However, the chipmaker invited Shield users to give GeForce Now a try."

    I mean... The writing on the wall could not be clearer: why give that for free to people when you can just force them to pay you for the service?

    Regards.
    Reply
  • kyzarvs
    Unolocogringo said:
    I smell a major lawsuit. Removing functionality after the fact ?
    💩
    I very much doubt it. There's countless instances of functionality changing over time from every sector of the industry - the newest Shields are a 3 year old design.
    Reply
  • kal326
    This is seems like a shameless push to convert users already using streaming to GeForce Now and keep subscriptions up. As the GPU supply issues have mostly resolved.

    They just announced a huge two year pandemic subscriber gain back in August. However no mentions of what number were paid and of what tier though. Well of course gamers probably flocked to services like that when they couldn’t get or didn’t want to pay stupid high mark ups. Now I wonder how many of those subscribers are sticking around. Selling a GPU is great, but perpetually renting one out in a time shared service is what really gets the investors salivating. Now they need to keep those numbers up at the very least and growing if possible.

    Other than the PR hit, it’s a win win win for Nvidia. They get rid of the technical debt of having to maintain the local streaming tech, sounds like they cleared out a lot of old stock just before this announcement, and anybody that isn’t absolutely pissed about it they may convert to a investor pleasing sub.

    Remains to be seen how bad the PR backlash is, but Nvidia seems to be convinced they are the goose that lays the golden GPUs and sure people will be mad. However even if they are mad, they are still buying for now.
    Reply
  • Giroro
    kyzarvs said:
    I very much doubt it. There's countless instances of functionality changing over time from every sector of the industry - the newest Shields are a 3 year old design.
    Hey, Sony had to pay their out a lot of money when they retroactively removed Linux functionality in the PS3. And by "a lot of money" I mean like $6 each to a tiny subset of uses, iirc paid via a valueless game download .... which might not even be downloadable anymore as Sony shuts down old servers.

    But I think the more concerning part of the "right to own" fight, is that it looks like Nvidia is canceling all of GameStream. That's a feature/Selling point for all their expensive GPUs, not just their niche streaming box.
    Reply
  • Giroro
    -Fran- said:
    "Nvidia didn't share the reason why it's pulling the plug on GameStream. However, the chipmaker invited Shield users to give GeForce Now a try."

    I mean... The writing on the wall could not be clearer: why give that for free to people when you can just force them to pay you for the service?

    Regards.

    Because those people already paid for the local streaming functionally. It was included in the price of the hardware.
    Not that Nvidia would ever consider those who purchase their product to be "people".
    We are just the faceless inhuman mass of Consumer.
    Reply