As of today, GeForce users will no longer be able to play World of Warcraft, Overwatch, or the Call of Duty series on GeForce Now. The removal was sudden and has caught many gaming fans off-guard. No reason was given for the decision, but many suspect that it’s down to money. The GeForce Now service recently exited beta, bringing in some 300,000 users into a business model known as “bring-your-own-games” that would allow PC gamers to use NVIDIA hardware to stream games on their devices.
The difference here between GeForce now and a rival like Google Stadia is that the games are already titles that you own. So if you own a Steam title, you can use this service to play it on Mac, PC, and other supported devices. It’s a really cool concept and has some pretty solid potential for users that have the bandwidth to support it. One potential stumbling block with game support has been a persistent problem though.
The announcement comes via the official forum for the service, with NVIDIA hoping that they can come to some arrangement with Activision Blizzard to have their games back again. As NVIDIA said on the forum:
“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. This means continually adding new games, and on occasion, having to remove games – similar to other digital service providers. Per their request, please be advised Activision Blizzard games will be removed from the service. While unfortunate, we hope to work together with Activision Blizzard to reenable these games and more in the future.”
So while it’s sad to see these games get removed, there is some possibility for an agreement between the two companies in the future. A lot of users are very disappointed by this news. Some users reacting to the post point out that the Activision Blizzard titles were a big draw for GeForce Now, and without them, the service holds little value for them.
As it stands now though, gamers appear to be out of luck. Unless NVIDIA wants to pay cash out of pocket to the gaming publisher, which could also lead to more publishers asking for the same deal, NVIDIA may be left with little recourse. And if they did go this route, the company would likely have to charge more for a subscription than they would like to.
