A few days ago, every game owned by Activision Blizzard was removed from the Nvidia game-streaming service Geforce Now. The reason for why this happened, according to Nvidia, is that it was just a “misunderstanding” over whether they had the rights to offer the games after its beta period. Nvidia also hopes to bring back the lost games in the future.
“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," Nvidia said 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.”
According to a Bloomberg article, Activision wanted a commercial deal with Nvidia over the rights to stream the games. However, Nvidia has decided to follow a no-commercial-agreements model because Geforce Now only streams games that the player already owns via other platforms like Steam, Uplay, and Epic Game Store.
Activision is not the only publisher to ditch Geforce Now after the beta period. Several other companies like Rockstar Games, Square Enix, and Capcom have also pulled their games. Geforce Now’s boss, Phil Eisler, told The Verge that “publishers are taking a while to make up their minds” over whether they want to make their games available to a platform where they do not get any financial benefit. However, they also do not lose any money over it, so it is a possibility that some games might come back in the future.
This entire incident could become more problematic for Nvidia. If every major publishing company decided to not allow their games on the streaming platform then there would be no incentive for customers to buy the premium membership.
So what do you think? Are you interested in Geforce Now? Do you want to play Activision Blizzard games on the streaming platform? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
