Nvidia says its GeForce Now service has lost its 20-game Activation and Blizzard library due to "misunderstandings" about permission to continue providing them when the cloud game service left its beta period.
Nvidia did not elaborate on what the differences were in a statement yesterday, but said it hoped it would bring the Activation Blizzard games back into the future. Full statement:
Activation Blizzard was a great partner during the GeForce Now beta, which we have taken to installing a free trial period for our founding members. Recognizing the differences, we have removed their games from our service, in the hope that we can work with them to redo this, and more, in the future. ”
Bloomberg reports that Blizzard activation wanted to negotiate a new commercial agreement for its games when GeForce came out of its beta period. Nvidia, according to Bloomberg, doesn't want that kind of arrangement for GeForce Now. Its players may only stream games they already own in market stores such as Steam, Play, Epic Game Store, and Walk.net.
GeForce has now removed games from publishers such as Rockstar Games, Square Enix and Capcom ahead of the service to higher prices. Verge noted on Friday night that GeForce Now's manager said that publishers were "taking a moment to make up their minds" to get involved based on the Nvidia contract model, which offers them no additional funding.
In addition, the disappearance of Activision Blizzard games from GeForce Now has nothing to do with the special broadcast agreement the broadcaster and Google signed in January. At its press conference with investors on February 6, the publisher said Stadia was not part of that arrangement. That policy provides publisher events on YouTube and describes Google Cloud as the "preferred provider" of network infrastructure.
What does this really mean for a PC player looking at GeForce Now that they are paying an access fee to games they already have – and yet they can lose that access at any time. GeForce Now offers free one-hour tests for anyone, and a free "founder" membership for the first 90 days, then $ 4,99 a month for the next nine months.