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2K Games titles removed from GeForce NOW
- Thread starter ghostcrew
- Start date
It is a remote vm pc...just with access to only Steam, EGS, uPlay, etc. and with a layer that limits what games you purchased that you have access to
That's what you could do before publishers/devs started to request them to block their games from being installed. There were no restrictions during the beta.
But they are. They are legally and morally right. Geforce is not a poor one man company. They are making money by violating the EULAs of other companies' products. Not everything that is convenient for consumers is morally right.
Geforce must pay its fair share to the companies that make their service relevant in the first place.
Umm... How does one play the video games made by those devs if not with the hardware that companies like Nvidia create?
Also, morally, the publishers are in the wrong. Legally, they're unfortunately in the right because the laws surrounding this are fucked. You buy a game on Steam, morally, you should own it. Legally, you don't.
No, they're not. Nvidia can't violate an EULA, how can they violate something they never agreed to in the first place? The end user that bought the game agreed to the EULA and they might violate them. And only some publishers/devs even have anything against remote installation/streaming in their EULA, most don't say anything about it at all.
It's only a matter of time before developers and publishers start limiting what PC hardware I can install my games on.
"Oh, you want to play our game on that graphics card? That will require an upgraded license."
"Oh, you want to play our game on that graphics card? That will require an upgraded license."
I feel like the answer to these questions are too obvious. And that perhaps instead of making vague statements in the form of questions you should just make statements and stand behind them.
extremely couldn't give a shit about current legal technicalities. seeing these publishers actively prevent me from being able to use my software purchases in this manner is infuriating.
True, though we have no idea what agreements Nvidia has with Steam and the other stores. You'd hope Nvidia checked that part at least.
It's all meant to utilize a logical lines and understand that there is a lot more nuance involved than most people here are not considering.
Yeah, I am still waiting for the nuance that has not been considered. Nvidia can obviously limit how their service functions. And the rights between nvidia and the user are described in their own EULA. They can and do choose what you can do on their remote PC.
Bailing out on Founders. It's a little silly to prevent you from playing games you already own, but it's obviously the kind of thing you'd need to get the okay on first, and the fact that Nvidia just barreled through and turned it on without actually checking first makes me more than a little wary of how they'll run things going forward.
LOLNO. The service is no doubt currently in the hole 100's of millions of dollars (hardware, setup, R&D, infrastructure). I'm guessing 95% of users are on the free tier and they certainly aren't putting a dent in their expense deficit with a few $4.99/mo subscribers. Nvidia at present are basically providing a free hardware platform (and absorbing massive losses) to create a new potential market for the publishers to sell games to. I could maybe entertain an argument if Nvidia had millions of users paying $10-$20/mo, but as it stands right now, no one's making money except the publishers who are likely picking up console double dippers and new users who don't have a PC. Obviously millions of paying subscribers is Nvidia's end goal, but that's far from the reality publishers are pulling the plug on right now.
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You may own the game, and Nvidia is simply re-purposing your license, but you have to understand that the publishers want money! More money! Because money!
I think if the developer is putting some hours to improve the player experience with some geforcenow enhancements, it should get some slice of the pie.
But if the game is put with no extra things and all cost of testing it is by nvidia, they shouldnt seen a dime of it.
If you want more money for something i already bought make it more attractive.
But if the game is put with no extra things and all cost of testing it is by nvidia, they shouldnt seen a dime of it.
If you want more money for something i already bought make it more attractive.
it wouldn't matter if they could confirm it or not...that's my point?
A 3rd party platform needs to pay for the products they are using as content for their pay service...it's as simple as that. Doesn't matter how many times a consumer spent money on that product in the past, or if ever.
That's what all streaming media services are basically...renting you the hardware to give you access to media more easily (hardware being cable box, DVD player, CD player, console etc)
There is no streaming media, that I can think of, that doesn't compensate publishers/producers in some fashion for their content streaming usage. Even if you already bought the media in some form (for example, streaming music through Apple Music even if you own the CD). Even Microsoft and XCloud will have to have an incentivized connection with publishers and devs to stream games you own on xboxlive to you.
Nvidia will have to make some sort of agreement with publishers/devs if they want to be a 3rd party platform provider. All platform providers have to do this.
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If the OT ever makes it to a second thread, this is my vote for the title.
To preserve other lines of business, yes?
Both the design and the pricing of GFN peg this as a side project. If I had to guess, GFN is running on spare cycles in GRID, as a way to bring down overall costs, not as a profit center.
That is a much different motivation than something like Shadow which lives or dies on its ability to sell cloud services.
Players would not have a claim against Nvidia, but players (who purchased software that was later pulled) could initiate an arbitration claim against the publisher/licensor for taking away a right that was arguably granted. It would be a claim of license violation.
And because of the way most EULAs are setup, there is a good chance that any player in the US who made such a claim would get a refund of the purchase price.
Foolish is a bit harsh. Optimistic is what I would go with.
I suspect Nvidia thought everyone would see it as a positive, especially since it widens the market for purchases and because Nvidia is basically selling at cost.
I don't think Nvidia expected publishers to want to demand more $$$ from consumers.
Nvidia would have agreements for using the GFN API and any games that they wanted to explicitly host. They can always of course make additional deals.
But the license between a publisher and end user is between those two. Nvidia isn't a party to the agreement. Even if the license did prohibit an action on the part of the end user it is not Nvidia's obligation to police that.
The claim that Nvidia is a distributor here doesn't have any substance unless Nvidia is preloading the content and using a single virtual drive to clone.
The claim that end users are not in control of the machine they are renting also doesn't have substance. Your drive is persistent and not shared with others.
And the vast majority of the licenses cited do not prohibit using your license on a virtual machine. If it does not prohibit the action, and the rented machine is a computer, then you have the right.
Which is aside from the fact that a virtual machine is, in essence, an emulator. If licenses could make emulators illegal, Nintendo would be a happy camper.
Apple Music seems like an entirely different concept, though, since that's from Apple's libraries that they have licenses for. If GeForce Now distributed the games directly to you (instead of hooking into Steam), that would seem equivalent. This feels more equivalent to uploading music I bought elsewhere to Amazon Cloud Player so that I can stream it through any device or browser I want.
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Nvidia isn't giving you access to all those games though, they're only giving you access to Steam.
We're not talking about Apple Music here, we're talking about having iTunes installed on a remote server and accessing your own library of content. Nobody would get any royalties in that case, just like they don't get anything when I play music from iTunes on my PC except for the money I paid when I bought the album.
[edit] Also, just curious, do music studios get money for every song I upload to Google Music and whenever I play them? How about Google Movies & TV? Do they get money for every time I hit the play button on those?
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I've referenced iTunes Match before in these threads because that's exactly what that service does. Matches your iTunes library, wherever your music came from (CD rips, tape rips, purchases from other stores etc) and lets you stream that music from iTunes to any compatible device at full iTunes quality (even if your CD rips are terrible 96khz mp3 rips). You're basically paying Apple to use their servers to stream music you already own from any other storefront or format.
And interestingly Apple do pay royalties to rights holders for everything streamed through iTunes Match.
It's not a direct apples to apples comparison with GeForce NOW but I think it's close enough. Apple are just giving you access to music that you've already bought. You've bought that music, why should Apple pay out royalties for it? The labels have already been paid when you bought it. But they do. They pay typical streaming royalties.
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Nvidia's naivety on this has been shocking.
Every major publisher has plans around streaming, and they all involve monetizing the shit out of it.
They would never let this fly under the radar.
Every major publisher has plans around streaming, and they all involve monetizing the shit out of it.
They would never let this fly under the radar.
Of course they do. They have no way to verify that you own the songs that you upload. And as you said, you even get a higher quality version of the song.
It's an entirely different concept than GeForce Now though. You have to have bought the game already on the service you access through GeForce Now. There is no way to use anything on there that you haven't paid for already, so you can be absolutely sure that the rights holder got his share already.
If only Google knew they only need to give you access to a full windows PC, in order to give you access to all of your games without any problems ..... I guess they are just dumb. At least that is what someone told me it would happen, if they give you access to full windows. :P
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It sounds like they let you match the songs you own on ITunes as well, which brings it much closer to steam. Because in that case they could/ would know.
NVIDIA really messed up by packaging this the way they did. They should have walked path of making this a low latency Desktop as a Service or Virtual Desktop service. By packing it the way they did, they tried to getaway with making a streaming service without having to pay the devs/pubs.
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Thats not the reason. Apple pays the rights holders because they're technically breaking copyright every time they stream that music to you. They couldn't get away with not paying streaming royalties. They're not paying every time on the off chance that you might not have bought the music. They're paying mechanical and performance royalties.
Again, it's not a direct comparison. Gaming doesn't have the same royalties structure. Even within music it's fucking dark arts... vague as hell. But it's one of the things that sets a precedent and will set the tone for rights holders wanting compensation when their IPs are used via a monetised service that has zero part of the original licensing deal.
As always, it's not a defence and it's not a judgement on whether it's right or wrong. Its just a reality of licensing, streaming rights and part of the discussion of why pubs might be removing their stuff.
Okay, so they pay royalties every time you actually play the music? Not just a one-time fee for the import of your CDs, tapes etc.?
That's a fair comparison in that case.
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also wanted to address (not aimed at you): shocking how many ERA users mix up "developers" and "publishers" in these type of threads as if they are the same thing.
I honestly wonder what Google Music does in that case, because I don't think they even match your music against anything, so it would be hard to pay royalties to anyone for streaming it. Though maybe they're exempt because they don't charge anything for it? And they have an upload and download limit.
it's not your music. it's the publishers music (or its licensed to to the publisher). your CD or tape or a stream is just a specific medium that is used to distribute the music.
Well, with digital self-publishing they actually can be the same thing.
Sure, but that's not my point. Many developers or artists in general do not own the full rights to the product they made because the publisher often is the party that funded the whole thing.
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Following on from my last post, read this quote about iTunes Match's royalty payments...
Imagine if gaming rights holders were 'thrilled' with GeForce Now and were praising Nvidia's investment in the industry rather than being 'frustrated' and requesting their content be removed.
We'd have a better service as users and rights holders would be happy(er) and more money would be pumped back into creators pockets than going 100% to Nvidia, a $100,000,000,000 company who absolutely dwarf most publishers in their net worth already.
How would you react if a developer / publisher wouldn't allow to play a game you own because of one part of your hardware?
Would it be different? Why?
Would it be different? Why?
And I assume these are agreed with record labels prior to Apple serving their music to users?
When publishers were doing that on PC not all that long ago, I stopped buying their games outside of extreme discounts.
Yeah, I can imagine that they're thrilled about it, especially in terms of piracy mitigation and such. That's also a really good thing in my opinion.
I don't think I'd even really have a problem with a small fee going back to the rights holders, it would still be much better than having to buy the full game again like on Stadia.