Nvidia’s GeForce Now is losing all Activision Blizzard games, a bad sign for cloud gaming (see threadmark for Nvidia statement)

LewieP · Feb 11, 2020

Shoichi said:
Are developers getting revenue every time I upgrade my gaming rig and playing the same game? They sold the game all the same to the individual. The service is just renting a gaming rig for $4.99 a month.

I guess you must be right and removing support for these games must just be a mistake from Nvidia or just a random coincidence or something, rather than the predictable outcome of rudimentary issues related to licensing and corporate decision making...

Principate · Feb 11, 2020

elenarie said:
Are they providing a virtual machine, though, or an entire service that obscures what it is running in the background, and thus not fully representing what the actual service is?

It is very important that if they are providing a virtual machine with Windows on it, customers see that as the actual service, not the idea that you could stream "any game you have from any platform you have".

A rather important distinction. :)

I mean yeah that's exactly what they're doing. I mean saying explicitly this a Virtual you can play games on would not harm their selling point. They could blast in red letters this message and it wouldn't meaningfully change anything it's a pedantic argument.. I hope Nvidia goes to court on this but I doubt they do based on the precedent it may set but this is an extremely silly point of contention from them.

Zelus · Feb 11, 2020

Aesthet1c said:
I have a feeling that cloud gaming is going to be like movie/TV streaming, where every company is going to want their slice of the pie and try to release their own cloud gaming service. Hopefully Nvidia can work out some deals to get these publishers back.

The strange part is that the customer already owns the game though, right? Not sure why they would want an additional piece of piece that they've already gotten their cut from.

elenarie · Feb 11, 2020

Principate said:
I mean yeah that's exactly what they're doing. I mean saying that explicitly this a Virtual you can play games on would not harm their selling point. They could blast in red letters this message and it wouldn't meaningfully change anything it's a pedantic argument.. I hope Nvidia goes to court on this but I doubt do based on the precedent it would make but there is an extremely silly point of contention.

Yea sure, but you know, legal and stuff. :D Not even going to pretend to understand all the fun legal things that may be tangled into all of this.

ImaLawy3r · Feb 11, 2020

Content creators have always wanted to control the means of distribution as well. I imagine this may compete with a service that they have planned in the future. They probably wouldn't want their customers to pay twice. For example a GeForce Now Pro customer will need to pay $5 a month on top of Activisions Streaming/Store front (I know, it's all the hypothetical) plus be at the mercy of GeForce's quality of streams to the end user.
A better situation for them is to say pay us $15 a month, forget about GeForce; install our client and get all of our games all by installing our client on your PC. It doesn't matter which back end they use, because they just care about our dollars.

Spyounet · Feb 11, 2020

I've take the premium subscription like two day ago just for playing Overwatch in good condition. I'm very disapointed right now

edit : they still available for the moment

ShinUltramanJ · Feb 11, 2020

Conkerkid11 said:
This is literally going out and deciding which hardware can and cannot play your product despite the consumer having already bought it.

I think the fact that it's a paid subscription service muddies the waters a bit. That's not the same as buying a piece of hardware to play on.

Like I said, I'm not surprised Activision's not playing nice. I could see Rockstar, Ubisoft, and Bethesda pulling their games as well.

Deleted member 18944 · Feb 11, 2020

ghostcrew said:
Nvidia are making money by selling you access to a publishers games.

Nvidia is selling access to a virtual machine that is capable of playing video games. They are not selling access to the games because you already own the access to the games.

Lets say Nvidia is a car manufacturer and that video games are a "car amusement park."

Nvidia sells a lot of parts that people can put into their own cars. Those people's cars can go to the car amusement park as long as they own a pass for the park. And plenty of people already have cars that go into the park.

But then Nvidia decides one day to not only sell parts, but to rent out super cars to people who want a better experience at the car amusement park.

Now, when people bought the Car Amusement Park Pass, they knew that there would be some rides that their car couldn't handle unless they had a super car. And they can use the Car Amusement Park Pass if they bought a super car outright.

So if Nvidia is selling you a super car that you can use at the Car Amusement Park, the very Park that you already own a Pass to, are they selling access to the park, or are they selling a better experience that Car Amusement Park Pass owners already paid for, but couldn't previously access because the car they own outright isn't as powerful?

Principate · Feb 11, 2020

ShinUltramanJ said:
I think the fact that it's a paid subscription service muddies the waters a bit. That's not the same as buying a piece of hardware to play on.

Like I said, I'm not surprised Activision's not playing nice. I could see Rockstar, Ubisoft, and Bethesda pulling their games as well.

There's a free version though and their argument is asinine. Game developers use cloud computing to run software there's nothing new about this, we've gone a decade with no problems regarding this stuff. It's a farce.

I'm sorry game publishers but your not special.

Kschreck · Feb 11, 2020

Powerofthecloud said:
That's already started. See EA and Ubisoft

Right, I was just saying there will likely be a lot more of this moving into the next generation.

Deleted member 18944 · Feb 11, 2020

LordRuyn said:
You can already play unsupported games by just launching steam.

You cannot. This feature was removed when it came out of beta. You now have a pop up window telling you that you can only play supported games.

diablogg · Feb 11, 2020

ghostcrew said:
If you own an album on iTunes, do you think publishers/labels would be ok with Spotify paying them nothing to stream it to you despite you paying them $9.99 a month?

It doesn't matter that you own the game on Steam. You've bought a license to play that game from Steam on your own hardware. As soon as you start paying a different company to access that game the publisher is gonna want a slice of that. If Nvidia can't come to an arrangement with them then they've got every right to tell them to stop charging people to deliver their games to people.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong but it's fairly basic. Nvidia are making money by selling you access to a publishers games. They don't have any power in this scenario - the games are the product. Publishers have all the power because they can revoke access to those games. And you can bet they're gonna ask for a decent cut of that monthly sub

I feel your analogy would be more akin to a Spotify like service somehow being able to stream you better speakers on shit you already owned.

Spyounet · Feb 11, 2020

Nvidia Geforce Now is the best service because I use my own games not like stadia who told me "hey can you bought that 70$ games just in cloud"

LordRuyn · Feb 11, 2020

Hobbes said:
You cannot. This feature was removed when it came out of beta. You now have a pop up window telling you that you can only play supported games.

hmmm, you are right. I could still do that at launch, but they must have locked it down

Principate · Feb 11, 2020

Spyounet said:
Nvidia Geforce Now is the best service because I use my own games not like stadia who told me "hey can you bought that 70$ games just in cloud"

Pretty much and if that service goes bankrupt you lose access to the software you bought.

Kthulhu · Feb 11, 2020

Aesthet1c said:
I have a feeling that cloud gaming is going to be like movie/TV streaming, where every company is going to want their slice of the pie and try to release their own cloud gaming service. Hopefully Nvidia can work out some deals to get these publishers back.

Unlike streaming I expect most of them to fail. The infrastructure is just too expensive at scale for a smaller company to get into the industry.

Pargon · Feb 11, 2020

ghostcrew said:
It's a bad sign for GeForce Now, not for cloud gaming.

It's a bad sign for consumers that don't want to hand over everything to corporations… if you didn't believe we already have with digital purchases.
The advantage of GeForce Now is that you brought your own games library and were playing it on their servers, instead of having to buy/rent games on an unproven service that could disappear tomorrow.

scitek said:
Honestly, if this went to court, I think a similar argument could be made by Nvidia, and there's a smidgeon of a chance it could hold up, given it was argued before the right judge.

Because if this isn't allowed, then what about Steam's remote streaming feature?

And that's where this becomes a problem. From their EULA on Steam:

You agree that you will not do, or allow, any of the following:

(5) use the Program in a network, multi-user arrangement, or remote access arrangement, including any online use except as included in the Program functionality

They could even shut down in-home streaming if they wanted to.
The EULA also says that they have the right to modify it at any time and if you disagree with the changes you have to stop using it.

Conkerkid11 · Feb 11, 2020

LordRuyn said:
hmmm, you are right. I could still do that at launch, but they must have locked it down

Yup. This was the first thing I tried. Really disappointing.

JohnnyMoses · Feb 11, 2020

LewieP said:
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

https://www.ea.com/en-gb/news/cloud-gaming-trial
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/10/...vice-google-stadia-price-release-date-e3-2019

Yeah. That's bad news! I'm still going to say what others here have continued to say. These publishers are probably going to lose potential sales. I'm an example. I use GeForce Now on my MacBook. I'm not going to buy a game that can't be used on GeForce Now. And, if that publisher doesn't have a streaming service where that game can be purchased and played (which is all those publishers you listed), I'm not buying the game. So, I guess they're willing to lose money to either play hardball with Nvidia or they're hoping you buy the game on their streaming service, which is only in the research/testing phase now? 🤷🏼‍♂️

Deleted member 18944 · Feb 11, 2020

Kthulhu said:
Unlike streaming I expect most of them to fail. The infrastructure is just too expensive at scale for a smaller company to get into the industry.

Infrastructure is not the expensive part. The expensive part is the service.

The infrastructure already exists.

ShinUltramanJ · Feb 11, 2020

Just for argument's sake, what's stopping Stadia from offering a $5 tier to play your existing game collection through them?

If Nvidia can collect money streaming your gaming collection then so can Google, right?

Spyounet · Feb 11, 2020

I really hope they are gonna get back asap because I've never be so good on overwatch lol

Kthulhu · Feb 11, 2020

Hobbes said:
Infrastructure is not the expensive part. The expensive part is the service.

The infrastructure already exists.

Paying all that money to Google, Amazon, and Microsoft will get expensive. Cloud gaming's biggest challenge once it gets popular is how to maintain it's profits. The big three can run these services at cost at least as far as infrastructure is concerned. I don't see how Activision Blizzard could possibly hope to compete.

Spyounet · Feb 11, 2020

ShinUltramanJ said:
Just for argument's sake, what's stopping Stadia from offering a $5 tier to play your existing game collection through them?

If Nvidia can collect money streaming your gaming collection then so can Google, right?

The Money ? I guess ?

Mass Effect · Feb 11, 2020

Aesthet1c said:
I have a feeling that cloud gaming is going to be like movie/TV streaming, where every company is going to want their slice of the pie and try to release their own cloud gaming service. Hopefully Nvidia can work out some deals to get these publishers back.

Yep. And it's going to happen much faster than it did to TV/movie streaming.

Sei · Feb 11, 2020

Greed.

GFN doesn't hurt publishers at all, the users already have to own the license to the game before they can play it.

TheMadTitan · Feb 11, 2020

This is why the only streaming of games I'm doing is with Steam Link, Parsec, and similar that allow me to stream my games to myself.

ghostcrew · Feb 11, 2020

diablogg said:
I feel your analogy would be more akin to a Spotify like service somehow being able to stream you better speakers on shit you already owned.

How about you buying the mp3s from Amazon Music and then Tidal saying, cool, we'll charge you £9.99 a month to stream the 24bit high quality audio files and, sorry bands/labels, we don't have to do any license deal with you or pay you any royalty because this user already bought the mp3s from Amazon.

The publisher doesn't care that you once bought the game/album/movie/whatever from one service 10 years ago for 80% off. They care that you're paying Nvidia/Spotify/Tidal/Netflix/etc a monthly fee to access their content and that company isn't passing any of it on to the publisher.

Again, you can argue back and forth on morals or what they should do but the reality is that the publisher holds all of the power because they can take their games off of the service. The games are the product. We can all sit here and say 'but you're just renting a virtual machine!' but that's not the product. The product is access to games. And without any games the service doesn't exist. Publishers have all the power to say, oi, Nvidia, we want a cut of that revenue. And if you don't pay up then you don't get to distribute our product to people.

Deleted member 18944 · Feb 11, 2020

ShinUltramanJ said:
Just for argument's sake, what's stopping Stadia from offering a $5 tier to play your existing game collection through them?

If Nvidia can collect money streaming your gaming collection then so can Google, right?

Stadia runs on a VM pool that is grounded in Linux, so the developers of the game / Stadia need to create compatibility in the form of drivers, etc, as opposed to a VM pool that uses a stripped down version of Windows, where the drivers and compatibility already exists.

So Google would have to develop a technology or system that would allow that compatibility to work without intervention from devs on either side.

Or, Google would have to forgo its linux based VM clusters and spend hella money on hardware, and windows. and probably NVIDIA GPUs, etc.

Deleted member 18944 · Feb 11, 2020

ghostcrew said:
How about you buying the mp3s from Amazon Music and then Tidal saying, cool, we'll charge you £9.99 a month to stream the 24bit high quality audio files and, sorry bands/labels, we don't have to do any license deal with you or pay you any royalty because this user already bought the mp3s from Amazon.

Your analogy is not very good.

You are not buying a vanilla version of Cities Skyline and suddenly getting access to Cities Skyline Deluxe GOTY Edition through Nvidia.

Geforce Now is the equivalent of FLAC music from Amazon and then paying AudioTechnica $10 a month for a DAC and AMP that allows you to experience that music to the highest quality.

You are not paying to access anything that you haven't already paid for. Ultra textures in Batman were always available to you, regardless of your hardware.

diablogg · Feb 11, 2020

ghostcrew said:
How about you buying the mp3s from Amazon Music and then Tidal saying, cool, we'll charge you £9.99 a month to stream the 24bit high quality audio files and, sorry bands/labels, we don't have to do any license deal with you or pay you any royalty because this user already bought the mp3s from Amazon.

The publisher doesn't care that you once bought the game/album/movie/whatever from one service 10 years ago for 80% off. They care that you're paying Nvidia/Spotify/Tidal/Netflix/etc a monthly fee to access their content and that company isn't passing any of it on to the publisher.

Again, you can argue back and forth on morals or what they should do but the reality is that the publisher holds all of the power because they can take their games off of the service. The games are the product. We can all sit here and say 'but you're just renting a virtual machine!' but that's not the product. The product is access to games. And without any games the service doesn't exist. Publishers have all the power to say, oi, Nvidia, we want a cut of that revenue. And if you don't pay up then you don't get to distribute our product to people.

I get the essence of what you're saying. I was just pointing out the analogy (at least with how I view it) didn't work.

I think in terms of Nvidia, you're right most likely their hands are legally tied unless they're willing to go to court to sort out this BS. In terms of actually streaming, loaning, copying or using products I own in whatever manner I see fit (digital or otherwise) I will continue to do that regardless of what an EULA says or even what the "law" says.

Spyounet · Feb 11, 2020

Maybe that thing was negociate during the deal between google and blizzard for the competitions of their games on youtube. Maybe they (COD, OW) are coming to stadia.

ghostcrew · Feb 11, 2020

Hobbes said:
Your analogy is not very good.

You are not buying a vanilla version of Cities Skyline and suddenly getting access to Cities Skyline Deluxe GOTY Edition through Nvidia.

Geforce Now is the equivalent of FLAC music from Amazon and then paying AudioTechnica $10 a month for a DAC and AMP that allows you to experience that music to the highest quality.

You are not paying to access anything that you haven't already paid for. Ultra textures in Batman were always available to you, regardless of your hardware.

You're paying to access it via streaming from someone else's computer, something that your license doesn't include when you buy it.

Pargon · Feb 11, 2020

ghostcrew said:
How about you buying the mp3s from Amazon Music and then Tidal saying, cool, we'll charge you £9.99 a month to stream the 24bit high quality audio files and, sorry bands/labels, we don't have to do any license deal with you or pay you any royalty because this user already bought the mp3s from Amazon.

A closer analogy would be that it's like iTunes Match/Amazon Music/Google Music where you can upload your local library of music (100,000 tracks anyway) and play it on any of your devices via the cloud for $25/year.
But even that is different, since it involves uploading your library to their servers; rather than simply logging into your Steam account on another computer to access your library of games, as you do with GeForce Now.

As I showed above, their EULA specifically prevents "remote access" so they are technically within their rights to shut this down; but mandatory EULAs aren't actually worth anything.
I would much rather have seen NVIDIA challenge this in court than concede and remove the games from the service.

Deleted member 6582 · Feb 11, 2020

Game companies watching the music industry have learned how not to give over control to disinterested parties who want that middle-man passive income. I think this will continue to be for the better. As soon as AAA gaming payouts are based on percentage of time played, it's going to look even worse than mobile in terms of addiction, grinds and forced social features. At least unplayed Steam libraries are keeping some genres afloat.

Principate · Feb 11, 2020

ghostcrew said:
You're paying to access it via streaming from someone else's computer, something that your license doesn't include when you buy it.

Yeah but everyone being doing this for a good decade now, It's the norm in cloud computing for all sorts of software. and EULA isn't binding everywhere to begin with. The problem no-one so far wants to find where the walls because of the massive implications.

dom · Feb 11, 2020

The act of streaming video can absolutely be a breach of copyright. Just because publishers turn a blind eye to this in regards to twitch, youtube, etc. Doesn't mean they have to always turn a blind eye to it.

Alucardx23 · Feb 11, 2020

ghostcrew said:
If you own an album on iTunes, do you think publishers/labels would be ok with Spotify paying them nothing to stream it to you despite you paying them $9.99 a month?

It doesn't matter that you own the game on Steam. You've bought a license to play that game from Steam on your own hardware. As soon as you start paying a different company to access that game the publisher is gonna want a slice of that. If Nvidia can't come to an arrangement with them then they've got every right to tell them to stop charging people to deliver their games to people.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong but it's fairly basic. Nvidia are making money by selling you access to a publishers games. They don't have any power in this scenario - the games are the product. Publishers have all the power because they can revoke access to those games. And you can bet they're gonna ask for a decent cut of that monthly sub

That was not an equivalent example to what is happening now with GFN. This would be like going into a gaming Cafe, renting the PC and login into your steam account to play any of the games you have purchased. Another example would be renting a console, login in with your account and playing the games you have previously purchased. You are renting the processing power to play the game. The difference here is that Geforce Now is able to do this at a larger scale and with a lower barrier of access.

DvdGzz · Feb 11, 2020

FUCK, wanted to play season 20 of Diablo 3 on there. Please come back.

Deleted member 3758 · Feb 11, 2020

noyram23 · Feb 11, 2020

As long as it's an option than their primary product then it's good for me now, kinda weird though that you can easily stream any game from ps4 (at worse quality than nvidia streaming)

dom · Feb 11, 2020

noyram23 said:
As long as it's an option than their primary product then it's good for me now, kinda weird though that you can easily stream any game from ps4 (at worse quality than nvidia streaming)

There are select games that don't allow it, I believe.

Fadewise · Feb 11, 2020

LukarWuff said:
Shadow uses your own computer. GeForce Now streams from Nvidia's own hardware. If you pay the $5 a month for the founders membership, you're able to use RTX 2080-level hardware, enable raytracing in games that support it, etc.

That's literally the opposite of how Shadow works. Shadow is renting remote hardware, the same as GeForce Now.

Belthazar90 said:
That's the kind of shenanigan you can only pull off if your market lead is so large that publishers won't be able to stay out of your platform/ecosystem, which I don't think will be the case for MS next gen.

Last one that was able to pull something like this on publishers was Nintendo in the 90s...

Do you honestly think that third party publishers won't publish on the Xbox platform? Just because Sony is in the lead doesn't mean that anybody is going to ignore the Xbox ecosystem.

noyram23 · Feb 11, 2020

domthybomb said:
There are select games that don't allow it, I believe.

I haven't encountered that from games that I played even the ones which doesn't allow for streaming or even uploading of screenshot (looking at you dbz kakarot).

I'm getting confused, is this like Steam Link/ Remote play or more like streaming from Nvidia's server? If it's the latter then I can see why

Rogue Kiwi · Feb 11, 2020

Kschreck said:
This is exactly what will happen. I won't be surprised if this happens to Gamepass as well.

Which is exactly why MS bought 12 studios, they need to bulk up their content ASAP.

TechnicPuppet · Feb 11, 2020

This is very disappointing. Was hoping to hear about big increases in the library not this. I really believe that Steam(if they launch a service) MS and Sony should jointly announce that they will not allow any games on their service going forward without streaming rights being included and that they will sign no deals for exclusive streaming.

It's important cause it's looking like the whole thing is going to be a complete fucking mess.

blastprocessor · Feb 11, 2020

So publishers bar a steam game running on geforce now?

MrH · Feb 11, 2020

Blizzard just keep giving me reasons to hate them.

Lukar · Feb 11, 2020

Fadewise said:
That's literally the opposite of how Shadow works. Shadow is renting remote hardware, the same as GeForce Now.

Shit, you're right. Sorry. I had always thought it used your own computer.

Sabin · Feb 11, 2020

Looks like that renting a "full PC" via Shadow is the only good solution for cloud gaming.

Nvidia’s GeForce Now is losing all Activision Blizzard games, a bad sign for cloud gaming (see threadmark for Nvidia statement)

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