On the heels of NVIDIA launching its latest version of GeForce NOW, a game streaming service for Windows, macOS, iPhone, and Android, a few game developers have decided to not include their games for use. That’s right, it started with Activision pulling its titles from GeForce NOW, making it so that way gamers couldn’t enjoy titles like Call of Duty on a remote computer. Now, however, Bethesda has pulled its titles off of GeForce NOW, meaning that some of your favorite games are no longer accessible.
No more Fallout, Elder Scrolls, or Doom on GeForce NOW
Just a week after Activision pulled its Blizzard titles due to a licensing dispute with NVIDIA, Bethesda has decided to do the same. This means that some of your favorite titles, including the entire Fallout series as well as The Elder Scrolls, are no longer available on GeForce NOW. However, one title from Bethesda will remain on GeForce NOW, which is Wolfenstein: Youngblood for reasons that neither company has disclosed as of yet.
The future of cloud streaming is…complicated
So, from the looks of it, this disagreement is over the fact that there’s a public-facing and commercial product being used to stream these games, according to The Verge. While GeForce NOW was in beta, and subsequently when NVIDIA wasn’t charging for access, there wasn’t a single issue with Activision. But, now that NVIDIA is charging for the service, the companies aren’t very happy as to how things are being handled.
While we aren’t entirely sure if this is the cause of the split up between GeForce NOW and Bethesda, it’s likely a similar situation here. Especially with the suddenness of it all, considering there was essentially no warning before the titles were pulled.
Licensing is really what it’s going to come down to when it comes to cloud gaming. These developers build their games to be used on a local system, where they have a fair bit of control over how gamers enjoy their titles. However, with cloud-based gaming, these developers lose control. People all of the sudden can’t troubleshoot if there’s a graphics card issue, or try and update drivers should that be required. So, until these issues are resolved, cloud gaming should be treated as a beta platform, because that’s just what it is.
Not all is lost
In a blog post yesterday, NVIDIA detailed some of the upcoming features and titles coming to GeForce NOW. Among those coming this year is CD PROJEKT RED’s Cyberpunk 2077. That’s right, the highly-anticipated game will be launching on GeForce NOW the same day that it’s released, which is huge news for the game streaming platform. While this is just the start, we can only imagine things growing exponentially from here. NVIDIA remains one of the world’s largest graphics card manufacturers, which will seriously help them as they try and push video game streaming forward.
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