If anybody needed the right to install it on a remote server, it would be the customer, not Nvidia. That's like renting a server somewhere and the provider of said server would have to pay a fee for every commercial software you install on it.
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Bethesda follows Activision in pulling games from Nvidia’s GeForce Now
- Thread starter ghostcrew
- Start date
How is Bethesda "pulling" their games? Nvidia is pulling the games, under pressure from Bethesda. That's not quite the same thing.
The reason I make the distinction is this: if Nvidia were confident that they were in the clear, legally, they wouldn't be removing these games. I'd argue that they are in the clear, and I certainly hope so, because this is functionally equivalent to Bethesda telling you and I where we can or can't install our purchased games.
But, in the world we live in, it's quite easy to argue that any purchase only applies to very narrow, specific ownership rights, or none at all. Which is bullshit, of course, but that doesn't mean it's not true, in practice.
The reason I make the distinction is this: if Nvidia were confident that they were in the clear, legally, they wouldn't be removing these games. I'd argue that they are in the clear, and I certainly hope so, because this is functionally equivalent to Bethesda telling you and I where we can or can't install our purchased games.
But, in the world we live in, it's quite easy to argue that any purchase only applies to very narrow, specific ownership rights, or none at all. Which is bullshit, of course, but that doesn't mean it's not true, in practice.
Bush league move from nVidia not to have this all locked up before launch. "Hopefully everyone is fine with this once we get it going for realzies!"
The question I have though is when you go to the website they are advertising the games. Do they need the rights to do that?
About GeForce Now? Why would you?
This should only show you which publishers actually give a shit about their customers.
The difference between Shadow and Nvidia is that Shadow is much smaller and doesn't have existing partnerships to worry about.
EULAs likely have a class action waiver, but if a few thousand players started demanding arbitration with Acti and Beth that would get their attention.
Ok, we need some regulation on this. We own the game license. If I go to someone's house to load the game on their computer, they can't block that, but if I oof my game on Nvidia's servers, somehow that's wrong. The only thing I'm renting is their computer. I mean theoretically I could rent a Super computer and load Steam on it and they can't block that. I don't typically like government intervention but this needs this immediately.
Doesn't this make sense though?
I mean it sucks yeah but if I was a developer then I would feel entitled to at least some of that 7.99 or so Nvidia charges a month.
We can talk about who owns hardware and vms etc. but at the end of the day Nvidia is making money on games from other developers.
I mean it sucks yeah but if I was a developer then I would feel entitled to at least some of that 7.99 or so Nvidia charges a month.
We can talk about who owns hardware and vms etc. but at the end of the day Nvidia is making money on games from other developers.
They may seem ethically similar, but they are not legally similar. When you rent a server and manually install stuff on it, it falls the safe harbor clause of the DMCA.
Safe harbor for hosting services protects you if you do not have the ability to control what users upload and you do not profit off of it. Clearly Nvidia does not meet these criteria.
This is stupid of them. I don't play have a gaming PC anymore, I do all my gaming on consoles but I subscribed to GeForce now with the intent to purchase Steam games with the sole purpose of streaming them so they're actually losing customers by pulling out of the service. It makes no sense: bad for customers, bad for the brand optics, bad for business... what the hell guys?
You already got 59.99 when I bought your game. I'm paying Nvidia $7.99 so that it doesnt run like ass..why would you be entitled to that? It does not impact your business in anyway. The only ones who would be impacted by this service are the hardware companies like Nvidia who would likely sell less mid to high end graphics cards as a result.
Nope doesn't make sense to me. As a developer you already got paid when I bought your game. Nvidia is the one who had to pay for the cost of setting up all this infrastructure and servers. I'm essentially just renting a PC from Nvidia, why should a developer get any cut from that?
Stuff like this is one of the main reasons I'm against any sort of all-streaming future. The concept of "owning" anything gets so nebulous that stuff like this would just be the norm. Licensed games with licenses pulled just cease to exist in any form and so on. It's a bad deal all round.
I've no issue not supporting the publishers who are doing this ever again.
They aren't losing out on anything as I already own these games and I've bought a few games from Ubisoft recently just to stream them so really having their games available in as many ways as possible like GFN sells them more games. It shouldn't matter who's computer I decide to play them on.
Absolutely disgusting. I don't plan on buying any more acti blizzard or Bethesda published games until they come to their senses.
They aren't losing out on anything as I already own these games and I've bought a few games from Ubisoft recently just to stream them so really having their games available in as many ways as possible like GFN sells them more games. It shouldn't matter who's computer I decide to play them on.
Absolutely disgusting. I don't plan on buying any more acti blizzard or Bethesda published games until they come to their senses.
I fail to see the logic here. If we follow this line of thinking, would a publisher need to get paid if people buy a new GPU? Since the sole purpose of a great gpu nowadays is to play games. GeForce Now isn't a store, it's not like Nvidia is making money by selling games - it just allows you to stream games that you've already purchased on Steam. The publisher / developer would've never made any money on hardware anyway and this is basically substitute hardware. I guess the argument on the publishers side is that them offering their games on GFN helps advertising GFN, but that in itself has a bit of a greedy whiff to it.
I mean, if I'm a student and I can't afford to shell out 1500 USD for a great gaming PC, but I could afford a game and 5$ a month for GFN to play the game at 60fps, why isn't it okay to allow this? That way more people can play your game and they have to buy the game first anyway in order to play it... I don't see the downsides here.
I really don't get this. Publishers should want to have as large an addressable audience as possible - this whole strategy here seems extremely shortsighted. The more people have access to games, the better it is for publishers and developers in the long run.
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Yea it should be Nvidia's job to make sure the games I already bought isn't played on a remote computer that doesn't make activision or bethesda happy
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Im guessing the thought process is they'd rather have a portion of monthly revenue from a million subscribers than however many extra sales this could theoretically get them.
Obviously removing their games means they're getting nothing now but I'd imagine the hope is that they can force Nvidia to start sharing that sub revenue like Apple does with labels and song writers on iTunes Match (they pay out 70% of iTunes Match subscription revenue).
I was quite happily playing my Steam copy of Wolfenstein on an old Surface docked to a TV in my basement. Now I'm not. That's money I shouldn't have spent, no?
Well, I was initially excited about GeForce Now, but now most of that is gone if publishers can just pull games whenever they want. The streaming future is looking more and more bleak, it's probably going to be extremely fragmented.
when you buy a licence you should be allowed to install it on whatever pc you like, even if that pc is remotely payed for. If you don't own the licence you're led to the store page so you can buy the game. The only thing Nvidia is providing is a low latency pc that you can play your already purchased games on. Bethesda and activision are not entitled to a single penny of nvidia's money. They are not offering bethesda or activisions software, and the only reason they are pulling their games is because both companies haven't produced a shittier product yet.
This. Why would they even have the right to pull the games? This must have something to do with Nvidia streaming from computers that have the games installed
I feel you and this is exactly the kinda rhetoric that no publisher or developer should want now that streaming was supposed to become one of the main ways of how people get to play games.
All of this is just sad to me and makes no sense. It actively scares customers to adopt a new way of playing games, one where you don't necessarily need to shell out a huge amount of money upfront on hardware just to be able to play a goddamn videogame.
I think they're just trying to explain Bethesda's (seriously flawed) logic.
Yeah, I've been reticent to give streaming a chance, but GeForce Now seemed like the first service that I'd give a real chance to. Hopefully things get sorted, but I have a feeling greed will win out.
This has been the first cloud service I've found useful. I like streaming games that I own and can download on a PC if I want. This is just making it less and less useful for me.
I noticed Ori isn't available on now. Since you seem to be very excited about the service what is keeping your game off? Is there some paperwork Nvidia has people do?
That was the general idea, but companies don't want to let that happen.
Just asked Microsoft about it. At the end of the day, they're our publisher, they call the shots. I'd love to have Ori on GeForce Now :)
Cool. Would maybe shed some light on what kind of paperwork Nvidia has sent to people. This situation seems so odd. Like they rushed the program out for some reason.
This is where I'm at.
Activision and Bethesda should be looking at this as an opportunity to MAKE a sell on their software from people who don't have the means of buying high end hardware. Greedy simpletons.
Yeah, exactly.
It sucks for the customer, but I understand the publishers' point of view. Nvidia is getting paid for the service that uses their games while they get nothing for it from Nvidia.
This is what I'm really worried about. I use shadow religiously and don't want to see this happen to them.
You could before.
They patched it pretty fast because people were playing games that weren't on the service with this method.
Right. Can you play any game you want regardless of service?
People keep screaming VM so I am just trying to understand what the service actually is.
No.
Like I said, they patched it out some short time ago.
For example, you could start up Fornite, then cancel it quickly and download RDR 2 on EGS to play it if you wanted. Same thing with Steam, you could download any game you owned and play it that way.
Now if you try it that way you get a messege that the game isn't on the service.
No. For a while you could, anyway. Nvidia have been locking it down more and more and other publishers backing out, etc. But technically, you're just seeing a VNC/RDP-like stream of a Windows 10 instance running on Nvidia/Intel hardware. You select the game from a list in Geforce Now app, it then boots up a video/audio stream running Epic Games Launcher, Steam or whatever, which asks you to sign in with the proper account, and install the game (which is near instant). Then you play.
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In a game like Destiny 2, this is a much better option than Stadia, because you end up playing with the entire pool of million+ PC/Steam players, rather than the couple thousand on Stadia. And in my testing works about the same.
Kind of how Nvidia is getting paid for GTX 2080 Ti cards people use to play the same publishers games? I don't really understand because you still have to buy the game. This isn't like paying rights to show a PPV in a bar where one PPV buy is shown to 100 people. You already need to own the game.
Uber/Taxi drivers don't pay a royalty to Ford because they drive other people around and charge for it.
