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Activision and Bethesda have withdrawn their games from GeForce Now, the streaming service set up by tech company Nvidia (via MCV/Develop).
Activision’s library was the first to go, because of a “misunderstanding” between the two partners. The Call of Duty publisher intended to sign a commercial agreement with Nvidia before it would submit its games to the official launch of GeForce Now. But, Nvidia believed Activision to be on board with the streaming service due to its participation in the beta test. The games were offered in the free trial for GeForce founders too, and Nvidia removed the games as soon as it became clear the companies had gotten their wires crossed.
“Activision Blizzard has been a fantastic partner during the GeForce Now beta, which we took to include the free trial period for our founders membership,” said Nvidia in a statement. “Recognizing the misunderstanding, we removed their games from our service, with hope we can work with them to re-enable these, and more, in the future.”
Now, Bethesda Softworks is in the process of pulling its games from GeForce Now. It is unknown whether this is the result of another error of judgement or if there is a different reason for the move. The streaming service lets subscribers play games from their libraries—including Steam and the Epic Games Store—through remote connection using Nvidia data centres. There are over one million registered users of GeForce Now, but this is the second take-down to hit the service since its launch in early February. Only Wolfenstein: Youngblood will be playable through GeForce Now, and the rest of the Bethesda games will be removed.
Nvidia’s Q&A post suggests that users should prepare for games to come and go on the service. “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.”
“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,” it continued. It advocated that players should champion GeForce Now if they want games to return to the service, but emphasised that they should remain respectful of publishers’ wishes.
