In brief: GeForce Now is joining the list of Western products and services being pulled from Russia. Nvidia's game streaming platform is being discontinued in the country due to the "current circumstances" that are impacting the quality of service being offered to users.
Nvidia was one of the many Western companies to stop shipments to Russia soon after its invasion of Ukraine earlier last year. Team Green continued to maintain its office in Russia after the suspension to support employees and their families, but it ceased all activities in the country in October.
PC Gamer reports that GeForce Now has operated in Russia since 2019 through partner company GFN.ru. It's one of several alliance partners Nvidia uses to make its service available globally: LG U+ in Korea, Softbank in Japan, Abya in South American countries, etc.
GFN.ru has continued to operate GeForce Now since Nvidia pulled out of Russia, but the company has announced in a blog post (via Overclockers.ru) that under "the current circumstances," it "cannot provide the quality of service" that meets its standards or that its users "expect and deserve."
GeForce Now operations in Russia will cease when GFN.ru shuts down the servers on October 1, while the purchase of long-term subscriptions will not be possible after September 1. Subscribers with active subscriptions after the closure will receive refunds. Countries including Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan will also be impacted by the shutdown
The sanctions against Russia are doubtlessly a big factor behind the end of GeForce Now in the country. The service allows users to stream games using high-end Nvidia hardware, though they must own the games in order to play them through the service.
Overclockers.ru also highlights the low popularity of cloud gaming as another reason for the shutdown, highlighting some of its technical barriers and the closure of Google Stadia.
We took a look at GeForce Now at the start of the year before the introduction of the RTX 4080 level – the Ultimate tier still used an RTX 3080 at the time. The results were less than impressive, but testing the RTX 4080 hardware following its rollout showed some massive improvements.
A survey from July showed that in 2022, 69% of Russian gamers said they'd played at least one pirated game, while 51% admitted to pirating more games than they did in 2021.
https://www.techspot.com/news/99967-geforce-now-exits-russia-over-quality-concerns-political.html
