Bethesda Softworks is the latest major gaming company to have their games pulled from NVIDIA GeForce Now. The company has asked that NVIDIA pull most of their games from compatibility with the system. Only Wolfenstein: Youngblood will remain playable via GeForce Now, and the rest of the Bethesda library will be locked out following this change.
NVIDIA GeForce Now is a cloud-driven streaming service that integrates with other PC gaming platforms like Steam and Epic Games Store to allow gamers to play their games via servers hosted by NVIDIA on any number of supported devices. The wide range of device compatibility, affordable pricing, and a huge game library makes it a far better option compared to the laughable options on Google Stadia. Bandwidth requirements for GeForce Now are also comparable to Stadia, with the cloud service needing 15Mbps for 720p at 60fps and 25 Mbps for 1080p at 60fps. This has led to more than 1 million gamers signing up with the service.
Nvidia’s Q&A post explains this new development and says gamers should expect more pulls to follow. “Games on GeForce Now can come down temporarily while we perform maintenance, or indefinitely at a partner’s request,” it explained. “Some publishers may choose to remove games before the Founders trial period ends. Ultimately, they maintain control over their content and decide whether the game you purchase includes the ability to stream it on GeForce Now.”
Activision Blizzard has already made sure its games don’t work with GeForce Now, mostly because they want control of their own ecosystem. And while this splintering is bad for consumers (See the mess of video streaming services that is currently causing people to have to hold more than one premium service to access content across many networks.) it’s understandable from a business perspective why these AAA companies would want to extract as much value as possible from their games by gating access.
“Countless developers and publishers are running with the opportunity to expand the number of gamers who can play their games by using GeForce Now. We have hundreds of thousands of members playing their favorite games on GeForce Now. We support the top free-to-play games like Fortnite, League of Legends, Warframe, and more. We just announced Cyberpunk 2077 will be available on GeForce Now the day it’s released, with ray tracing enabled. And there are plenty more that we’re working to onboard as quickly as possible, including new additions next week,” finished the post.
What this means for the future of NVIDIA GeForce Now is a bit uncertain, but it’s pretty likely that more AAA publishers will either ask for their games to be pulled or prevent them from working on the service in some manner.
