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Cloud gaming service GeForce NOW "Founders" access to cost $4.99/month
- Thread starter CliveLH
- Start date
I agree, but it's hard to see a company like Valve wanting to put a stop to it without having their own service available.
Basically all Geforce Now does to PC gamers is to allow them to remain in the Steam ecosystem and continue having an incentive to purchase their games on Steam. Same for other platforms. The only service this really hurts, currently, is Stadia. Though I assume Stadia's strategy is to out-quality everyone else so that going-forward, people will opt to play game there. *shrug*
Yeah I wasn't really thinking of Valve, I was thinking of the publishers of the games that are being played on this service.
Edit: and yeah we know EA are planning their own streaming service, Ubisoft have a partnership with Stadia, and I am sure other major publishers are thinking about offering a service that would potentially be undermined by this. Bethesda, for example, are notorious litigious.
I don't want legal battles over this if users are finding it a valuable service, but corporations are gonna corporation.
Why? You've already purchased the game, NVidia is simply providing the hardware. At least that's my understanding of how GF Now works.
Hard to see them having issue with it as well, since all games are still getting purchased on some service.
e.g. I don't own any gaming hardware, but if something came out today that I really wanted to play, I'd likely buy it if I could play it via GeForce Now. Otherwise I just wouldn't buy it at all.
You've not purchased a license to stream it under these circumstances.
I am pretty sure management of major publishers would want a slice of the recurring revenue.
Because corporations like money, and if the license under which you were sold a game does not grant you the rights to stream a game under these circumstances, why would they want to let people do it at no additional charge?
Yup. You are essentially just paying to use their hardware to play your own games. Technically, I could pay you to install TeamViewer or RemoteDesktop on your PC and let me log into my steam account on your PC remotely to play my own games. Obviously the streaming quality would be terrible, but the concept is essentially the same.
You are probably right; I'm just wondering if they can legally control how people access their own steam account. If I stream from my office to my bedroom, is it really that much different than streaming from a datacenter in New York to my home in Montreal?
I'm not sure they have the legal grounds to demand that, though. I'm not an expert in law, but it doesn't make a lot of sense.
I am fairly sure the likes of the Bethesda legal team would be able to make a case arguing such.
The user license agreement is a legal document specifically drawn up to regulate people's access to games they have purchased. Much like I would be breaching that agreement were I to offer to let people rent access to games I have bought on Steam.
If you are playing games on steam then you have accepted a user license agreement. There's a bunch of terms in there, some of which are not particularly feasibly enforceable, but when such terms are breached by a large scale commercial operation from the likes of nvidia, lawyers get aroused.
Steam have an entire licensing program for internet cafes
Steam Support
Log in to your Steam account to get help with your Steam games, contact Steam Support, request refunds, and more. Help is also available if you can't log in, need to reset your password, or recover a hijacked account.
They would likely have to implement similar for this to avoid any legal potholes, and publishers would have to be on board (which would likely mean them getting a slice of subscriptions).
What if you were renting access to their own games that they already purchased?
Im with you and I expect to definitely here more about legal stuff when this gets a wider launch.
I presume licensing issues is why we've seen games leave the service during the beta.
Apple still have to pay a streaming royalty to labels when you stream something on Apple Music, even you've already bought it on iTunes. If you're paying x company x amount to stream their product the publishers are gonna want a cut of that. The games are the product that Nvidia are selling. They can say it's a service but without the games they have no service. Publishers have leeway there.
Yeah this is one advantage that Stadia actually has over Nvidia's service. I like that I can just open chrome on linux and it works. No extra software.
Here's a specific bit of text from an EULA as an example:
From here:
Black and white, clear as crystal etc.
Thank you :)
That's quite a niche thing to be paying $5 a month for.
I mean, sure, I guess. I've only ever used GFN through a SHIELD TV, so I'm not sure what the interface is like for PC use. I think it might be some sort of launcher so gaming on your office PC might be out of the question (Stadia launches through a webpage, so all you need is Chrome or Edge), but maybe your own laptop in a hotel would work? If the hotel wifi is up to it.
Like, I'm not saying that your reason is invalid or anything, but as someone who has used GFN quite a bit in the past (it's the reason I got interested in Stadia in the first place), when you see how the overall package actually performs, the use-cases you are envisioning are a lot more tenuous than you might think.
And the reason I'm calling out the "We don't like Google herp derp" is because people are being really inconsistent when discussing the 2 services. For example.....
Nobody getting excited about the service is bringing up bandwidth caps, to be more precise. (I know, its just semantics, so whatever. Sorry to be picky).
It just shows how inconsistent people can be. Both GFN and Stadia are going to eat through data when you run them, but in Stadia threads it's bought up all the time, whereas here? Nothing. Not a single person seems to have a bandwidth cap to worry about.
How very very curious.
The hot mess is stadia's unveiling, pricing, and overall information and how they unveiled it with now very little updates to what is next. Some games now being taken off the list of having a stadia version.
Their best bet was instead similar to how NVIDIA is doing it with it working with your current library. Which would mean they would have to play ball and pay money to get those account systems to work with their kit.
An Internet Cafe is most likely charging for the play time of a game their customers never purchased, though, which might be getting in the way of a publisher's sales while also making money off of it. With GeForce Now, you will still have to purchase the game plus pay NVidia for the convenience of not having to build your own PC. They're making PC gaming more accessible and therefore more profitable by breaking the entry barrier of having an expensive gaming PC.If you are playing games on steam then you have accepted a user license agreement. There's a bunch of terms in there, some of which are not particularly feasibly enforceable, but when such terms are breached by a large scale commercial operation from the likes of nvidia, lawyers get aroused.
Steam have an entire licensing program for internet cafes
Steam Support
Log in to your Steam account to get help with your Steam games, contact Steam Support, request refunds, and more. Help is also available if you can't log in, need to reset your password, or recover a hijacked account.support.steampowered.com
They would likely have to implement similar for this to avoid any legal potholes, and publishers would have to be on board (which would likely mean them getting a slice of subscriptions).
The end-user is still the person who purchased the game, and the user agreement does not dictate where you can run it and in this case you're just renting a virtual machine to play it. NVidia is not directly profiting from the games you're playing; they're charging for the hardware and network infrastructure required to run your virtual machine.
Then why is there often text in the user license specifically referring to situations like this?
They are certainly losing money if they don't want people streaming their games from anything other than their own streaming service.
Nvidia are directly profiting. That's why they are charging money. No one would pay for this subscription were there no games with which to play on it.
I am sure Nvidia could get many publishers to agree to allow their games on this service. But not for free.
toy_brain
Actually I would say it's more for people who want to play their PC games at home, but their PC is old and can't run stuff at ultra anymore. Or for people who are looking to get into PC gaming because the games are cheaper, and better settings, but maybe can't afford buying a big rig PC, but something like a $200 Shield TV is feasible.
I can't quite think of an example where the publisher specifically says on what machine you're allowed to run your game. Lending games, publicly streaming, etc., yes. Don't remember ever seeing one about this, though.
With the exception of Microsoft, I don't think any publisher has a service like GeForce Now that could be possibly damaged by this. My point is NVidia's service here isn't exactly game streaming like Stadia. It's "screen-streaming" facilitated for games. They're selling you a virtual machine, not the games. You bring the games you've already paid for, NVidia brings the hardware. I don't see a lot of legal ground for publishers to demand a share of it because they already got what was theirs: the sale of a specific game.
Now, in the case of Microsoft, I can see them legally pursuing their rights here, since this directly interferes with XCloud for PC. Especially now that they're bringing their games back to Steam. But even then, they would still be making money from sales.
It's probably due to Stadia being launched as a platform, which makes peoples' inner platform-warriors come out. Geforce Now is more like a tool that complements ecosystems that people already use. It's kind of like the price of first-class tickets; people will certainly complain more if they are being asked to fly on a plane that only has first class seats.
I already posted an example of such an EULA.
Which of my posts suggested I don't understand what Geforce Now is? I am well aware of how it works.
I don't understand why you seem to think that none of the publishers that sell games on Steam except for Microsoft have any plans for streaming services.
Bethesda Softworks Announces Orion
id Software’s Chief Technology Officer, Robert Duffy, and the Director of Publishing at Bethesda Softworks, James Altman, got on stage during the BE3 2019 Showcase to announce Orion. Orion is a patented collection of software technologies that optimize game engines for superior performance in a...
bethesda.net
Square Enix Committed To Making Its Complete Library Available Digitally
While there have been some unexpected bumps in the road, president Yosuke Matsuda confirmed it's a primary goal for the company.
www.gameinformer.com
There are probably more than these.
Even if there weren't, they would not need to have a game streaming service on the market in order to potentialy pursue legal action against a commercial operation that was facilitating and profiting from people breaching their user agreement terms.
For me personally it's because I don't see PC hardware as being a good value at this point.
Back in the day you either bought gaming hardware and had access to games or you didn't. Now you don't need any hardware at all. In order for ASUS or MSI etc to convince me to spend a grand on a PC, I'm going to have to be convinced that the experience I'm getting far outweighs what I can get for streaming $5-$20 (or whatever it ends up being). Currently I'm just not seeing the value in the hardware. I don't even need the shield TV because I can just use my regular laptop.
That doesn't seem black and white to me lol. That's a clause stating what you can do with the software. But you aren't doing anything on Nvidia's PC that you aren't doing with your own PC. You aren't giving the game to NVidia or anyone else, you are just downloading the game on your own steam account, which is already within the scope of both the publisher and Steam's TOS.
If you were uploading the game software from your home to Nvidia's service, that would be a clear violation of the TOS. But it's coming from the publisher to Steam to "some computer" which as far as I can tell is not a violation.
Which of my posts suggests I think you don't understand what GeForce Now is? I'm merely drawing my line of thought.I already posted an example of such an EULA.
Which of my posts suggested I don't understand what Geforce Now is? I am well aware of how it works.
I don't understand why you seem to think that none of the publishers that sell games on Steam except for Microsoft have any plans for streaming services.
Bethesda Softworks Announces Orion
id Software’s Chief Technology Officer, Robert Duffy, and the Director of Publishing at Bethesda Softworks, James Altman, got on stage during the BE3 2019 Showcase to announce Orion. Orion is a patented collection of software technologies that optimize game engines for superior performance in a...Square Enix Committed To Making Its Complete Library Available Digitally
While there have been some unexpected bumps in the road, president Yosuke Matsuda confirmed it's a primary goal for the company.
There are probably more than these.
As for the links you provided, none of those are concrete services. They have plans and they may want to pursue their legal rights if those plans ever become reality, like I said about Microsoft, that doesn't mean courts will rule in their favor. They're still making a profit through NVidia services, because it requires users to own the games. A direct purchase is required here, and NVidia gains nothing from it.
The Ubisoft link is unrelated as well, because that service is a lot more like PS+ and GamePass than it is Stadia, XCloud or GeForce Now. It's just giving you access to the games. Actually means it also works with GeForce now, given it supports UPlay.
That excerpt is clearly talking about piracy and illegal sharing. There is nothing on it about what machine you're allowed to download and run your games on.
Agree with this. Depends on your internet of course but workable for out of the house. Not like I spend ages gaming away from my main gaming station anyway.
Yup for sure, I'm in the same boat right now. But I like VR, so it kinda messes with this right now.
And yeah, GeForce now will run on a lot of things, I was just saying the Shield, because it's small, cheapish, and is meant to just be left hooked up to your TV if your looking for a more console like experience. But for sure playing on a laptop, or iMac (I think it's supported? If not soon I'm sure), or just your old tower PC you don't want to put the money into upgrading anymore.
You almost made the prefect argument there, you just left out one bit.
"That way, once they do save up the money to buy a new PC, they don't have to re-purchase those games to carry on playing them on their new device".
See, I'm not actually against GFN. I've said before that I used it quite a bit. I even had a legit use case beyond 'just trying it for fun', as Wreckfest loaded so slowly from my 5600rpm HDD it was a pain in the arse to play, but when streaming from GFN it was kinda bearable (the joys of server-class storage!).
GFN certainly has its uses. But, to quote an old meme, "Why not have both?"
Stadia Base will have a $0 entry cost beyond that of buying the games when it launches, and is a bit more flexible as to what you can use to access it (anything running desktop Chrome basically). It also doesn't have a time limit for your game sessions, and is a bit better on data usage. The 2 services will probably have a different selection of games, so, why are some people here cheering for GFN but wishing death on Stadia?
At these low prices, why would you want one to die? Why not use both?
Possibly.
I think another part of it is that Stadia has no announced 'Exit strategy'. Like, if you buy games on Steam to play on GFN, even if you don't own any sort of PC at all, you still could in theory go out and buy a PC to run them if GFN ever shuts down. Same for Xcloud. Stadia doesn't have that. Typically Google have pretty good wind-down periods for their services, but even so, there is still the possibility of being left with nothing. I do understand the fear, and I've actually changed my gaming habits slightly when using Stadia, in that I actually finish the games I buy, and I don't blindly amass loads of games just because they were on sale (not that Stadia has much to sell right now anyway), so its kinda made me a better gamer.... sort of..... I guess?
Stadia really screws with peoples sense of ownership. As in, like, you don't.
Intended or not, it's a huge usability issue for the service, especially if they try to position themselves as a mobile solution to play your own libraries. If streaming via phone ever hopes to supplant a Switch or 3DS it needs to be as pick-up-and-play as possible. Stadia and xCloud are miles ahead of GeForce Now on this front currently. They're somewhat hamstrung by the fact that these are native PC clients that have been rigged up to support controller-only play, and Steam itself has done a decent amount of work to smooth that experience out for Steam Link and Big Picture Mode, but even logging into Steam via GeForce Now can take minutes on a phone, especially if you have a complex password and use SteamGuard. And you're out of luck for those BPM enhancements if you're trying to play a Battle.net or uPlay game, so it would behoove Nvidia to put some work into the UX for phones.
Yeah for sure. I totally agree with all of that. I pretty much use all platforms depending on what I want to do. There is a place for all of this stuff, and I will be in on all of it. Stadia works great, people just love to hate things. I have faith they will sort out their issues.
This is disappointing. It's a subset of games in my library. A small one at that... I mean, no FFXV?!
"Internet server" is incredibly vague in that EULA. My home machine is an "internet server" is Square going to sue me? That's not for situations like this, that's for uploading the software for download by other people. You also aren't uploading anything really; you are downloading the game via the Steam Client as it's designed to be downloaded, just to a VM not a home machine, the difference is basically like arguing semantics.
People use VM's all day every day for work and install software that also has similar EULA's. Enterprises virtualize applications just like nVidia is doing to Steam w/o a special license too. As long as it's for personal use, the license is owned by the user using it, and not actually to be "served to multiple people" you are generally fine, even if by some interpretations a EULA would block it. But by how vague that is.. any machine connected to the internet could theoretically not allow that software, it would be incredibly difficult to enforce.
They have no reason to stop this really; people are still paying for a personal license.. they are not installing on a VM for the purpose of redistributing any more than installing on my own machine connected to the internet does.
If anything this can increase any given company's sales; I think you are off on this one. GeForce Now has been operating this way for years.
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Think about it this way:
GFN is a hugely popular attraction. To play there you don't need to pay anything, but you'll need to go through a queue with everyone else that don't want to pay, AND you can only play for one hour. When your one hour is up, you get out, but can play again without daily limits. Only problem is you'll have to go through the queue again.
If you DO pay, you to through a (smaller hopefully) queue, and can play up to 6 hours at a time. When those hours are up, you can play again by going through the paid queue.
one means you have an hour before you have to go back in line, the other means you have 6 hours before you have to go back in line (but you have a fast pass and have priority to go back in)
Sounds great, but seems rife for
- abuse once people find a way (and you know some will) to fake ownership/ steam accounts
- legal challenges as apparently you do not play "your" copy (that would technically require you to stream from your own home hardware), but one that Nvidia "dupes" from their servers once you login with your Steam account
Will be curious to see where it goes.
- abuse once people find a way (and you know some will) to fake ownership/ steam accounts
- legal challenges as apparently you do not play "your" copy (that would technically require you to stream from your own home hardware), but one that Nvidia "dupes" from their servers once you login with your Steam account
Will be curious to see where it goes.
Unkess I misunderstand, you have to login into your own Steam account on an Nvidia server, which then downloads the game on a virtual machine of theirs, which then streams the game to you?
In this case, potentially spoofing an account, or possibly creating fraudulent accounts with stolen keys, or even stealing accounts, would work.
There are probably other workarounds too, but it seems to me it just adds a layer to the Steam/ user relationship that just (potentially) opens doors for abuse (many already possible directly by users towards Steam, but now with a degree of separation).
Don't get me wrong, the idea/ cost sounds great to me. I just don't really see publishers and platforms like Steam / Origin/ Uplay etc. playing nice over time, specially when they will start implementing their own streaming solutions.
Spoofing a steam account for that wouldn't work, the later 2 are things that can already happen right now with any PC on Steam. Nvidia isn't checking your account and seeing if you own that game then letting you play it. It's literally using Steam to download and play it, so there's no "extra" possible exploit. Of course, if you're using a stolen steam account or a account with stolen keys you can play the games there, just as you'd be able to do on any other PC.
You log into your Steam/EGS accounts on a Virtual Desktop, there's a difference. This is no different than if you were using on a VM/VPC now. All Nvidia is doing is providing the hardware, nothing more. There is nothing illegal about this. They aren't charging you for the access to the games, they are charging for access to the machine.
This has nothing to do with anyone else's cloud service because you are playing the games YOU OWN on the storefronts. They would have to restrict access to Steam for them to stop you from being able to play using GeForce Now. The only way I can see this happening is if someone gets a dumb ID and says you can't log into Steam or wherever, on anything other than your main PC. Which, again, would be dumb.
As far as faking steam accounts, what's any different than now? People do that now. People steal/borrow other steam accounts now. So I don't understand that logic.
This has nothing to do with anyone else's cloud service because you are playing the games YOU OWN on the storefronts. They would have to restrict access to Steam for them to stop you from being able to play using GeForce Now. The only way I can see this happening is if someone gets a dumb ID and says you can't log into Steam or wherever, on anything other than your main PC. Which, again, would be dumb.
As far as faking steam accounts, what's any different than now? People do that now. People steal/borrow other steam accounts now. So I don't understand that logic.
So considering the relationship between Nintendo and Nvidia, do people think we might get GeForce NOW on Switch? The Steam/EGS integration could be replicated on the Nintendo Eshop and allow users to play their purchases (e.g. Doom Eternal) through the service (hell what if Nintendo games like Zelda:BOTW could be boosted through GeForce NOW?)
