Nvidia forced to remove Activision Blizzard games from GeForce Now

[Humza]

What just happened? Nvidia GeForce Now is shaping up to be a decent way for hopping onto the cloud gaming bandwagon, but the service recently took a hit from publisher Activision Blizzard, who've decided to remove their entire catalog of Battle.net games from GeForce Now's content library.

The term 'cloud gaming wars' likes to be thrown around quite a bit, and it seems Nvidia has had the first casualty on its hands after Activision Blizzard decided to pull down its entire catalog of games including Overwatch, WoW and the Call of Duty franchise from GeForce Now.

As noted earlier, the service was launched with several lucrative features, including a free tier option and the ability to let users play their existing library of games, as long as they could prove title(s) ownership. However, there's another string attached to the business side of things that dictates content availability, requiring a publisher/developer's consent for making their games playable on GeForce Now.

Activision Blizzard was one such publisher that requested its games to be removed from GeForce Now, which means players who even own a copy of their titles won't be able to use GeForce Now to play/stream it.

The decision prompted the following response from Nvidia:

As we take GeForce NOW to the next step in its evolution, we’ve worked with publishers to onboard a robust catalog of your PC games.

This means continually adding new games, and on occasion, having to remove games – similar to other digital service providers.

Per their request, please be advised Activision Blizzard games will be removed from the service. While unfortunate, we hope to work together with Activision Blizzard to reenable these games and more in the future.

In addition to the hundreds of games currently supported, we have over 1,500 games that developers have asked to be on-boarded to the service. Look for weekly updates as to new games we are adding.

It seems unlikely that Activision Blizzard will reverse their decision since the publisher recently entered into a multi-year agreement with Google over multiple gaming fronts. The strategic partnership will not only put YouTube as Activision Blizzard's exclusive esports streaming platform but the latter will also use Google's cloud services to power 'new player experiences' which, as noted earlier, could potentially mean Google Stadia getting a much-needed boost from Battle.net's games catalog.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/83980-nvidia-forced-remove-activision-blizzard-games-geforce-now.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

In the good old days I could just go to STEAM for everything. Now I've gotta have like several different download suites and I get confused as to where to buy what.

Crysis and Crysis 2 on my Steam account, but I gotta go to EA for Crysis 3?

And then Origin for Command & Conquer.

And then Battle.net for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
I got a copy of CoD:MW free when I bought my second 2080Ti in November and boy was it the most confusing download process ever.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Yet another reason to torrent... all my games are in the same place...

 

[bviktor]

Tried it, awful experience.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1227014293834604544

(see my own replies for more)

 

[SirDigby]

I wouldn't really have thought Geforce Now would be appropriate for that anyway, Overwatch is online only right? So latency from a streamed service and input lag as well must be pretty crippling, ditto for CoD and WoW could run on most PCs these days?

 

[Eldritch]

Thought Netflix/HBO/Hulu was bad enough?

Though Spotify, Pandora, Prime music, Apple music was confusing?

Wait till we further fragment market making most content out of reach unless you pay absurd amount of monthly fees.

Or you know, unless you get fed up and just start to pirate.

 

[JKnight]

Thought Netflix/HBO/Hulu was bad enough?

Though Spotify, Pandora, Prime music, Apple music was confusing?

Wait till we further fragment market making most content out of reach unless you pay absurd amount of monthly fees.

Or you know, unless you get fed up and just start to pirate.

Piracy is only going to increase because of this money grab. Then they will complain too many people pirate our stuff well you started it.

 

[ShagnWagn]

Yet another reason to torrent... all my games are in the same place...

Yeah. I used to do this all the time. I would download and try them (demo), then I would buy the ones that were worth the money. I was burned soooo many times on crappy blind purchases, which only funds more crappy games.

I stopped downloading them due to a change in morals (became a born-again Christian), but continue to get burned. Not so much as terrible games, but privacy issues. Case in point is Monster Hunter... I bought it but didn't try playing it for a few months later. You are unable to launch it without agreeing to them taking whatever they want off your computer. It was too late to get a refund. That REALLY ticked me off. Then this whole slew of different clients for everything. I've now forgot where some of my purchases were, or that company is now dead.

My desire to download first to demo is at a turning point. I probably should look into pirating again, but I don't know where to start any more. I will still buy games I play more than an hour or so (like steam's refund policy).

 

[slamscaper]

Yet another reason to torrent... all my games are in the same place...

But this is just a huge middle finger to the game devs. I mean they tend to pull away from the PC as it is because of people like you that simply pirate all their content. If they made the kind of money from the PC titles that they should be making, we'd see more PC exclusives and we'd see the devs really take advantage of the extra horsepower the PC has, instead of getting crappy ports six months late...

It's not impressive at all that you do this. I wouldn't brag about it.

 

[Squid Surprise]

But this is just a huge middle finger to the game devs. I mean they tend to pull away from the PC as it is because of people like you that simply pirate all their content. If they made the kind of money from the PC titles that they should be making, we'd see more PC exclusives and we'd see the devs really take advantage of the extra horsepower the PC has, instead of getting crappy ports six months late...

It's not impressive at all that you do this. I wouldn't brag about it.

Who’s bragging? Just a statement of fact... There are SUPPOSED to be advantages in purchasing vs stealing a product.... the fact that it’s the opposite is crazy.

As for the rest of your diatribe... feel free to show me some evidence that piracy has cost a game developer one lousy cent.... every study tends to back the fact that piracy actually increases awareness and sales of titles...

 

[Hexic]

In the good old days I could just go to STEAM for everything. Now I've gotta have like several different download suites and I get confused as to where to buy what.

Crysis and Crysis 2 on my Steam account, but I gotta go to EA for Crysis 3?

And then Origin for Command & Conquer.

And then Battle.net for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
I got a copy of CoD:MW free when I bought my second 2080Ti in November and boy was it the most confusing download process ever.

In the good old days, Bnet was the only gaming platform out there. Then came fragmentation. Steam is a fantastic platform, but I can hear 2005 calling and it wants it’s hosting platform back.

 

[ShagnWagn]

Has this been a lesson they will learn from - to not do business with anything in the storm cloud? Renting anything where the rug can be pulled out from under you is one of the worst decisions you can make. That is, if you care about having anything you pay for or want to have again at your disposal. Not just that, but renting the price is just going to keep going up and up. This is for anything. Not just games but servers and anything else you rent.

Has anybody actually tried storm cloud gaming? How is the latency? Console gamers may not notice being how slow controllers are anyway.

Kind of like on steam - they decide to pull the plug at a whim and your (thousands) of dollars are gone in an instant.

 

[Evernessince]

But this is just a huge middle finger to the game devs. I mean they tend to pull away from the PC as it is because of people like you that simply pirate all their content. If they made the kind of money from the PC titles that they should be making, we'd see more PC exclusives and we'd see the devs really take advantage of the extra horsepower the PC has, instead of getting crappy ports six months late...

It's not impressive at all that you do this. I wouldn't brag about it.

Devs DO make the most on PC though. It's by far the biggest platform.

Piracy spikes when PC Gamers feel they are getting shafted. When you treat PC gamers like thieves, expect your game to get pirated. When you make it a PITA to play your game, expect it to get pirated.

I don't pirate games but I can see why people do. I straight up don't buy games that require me to jump through hoops.

 

[Mister_K]

Thought Netflix/HBO/Hulu was bad enough?

Though Spotify, Pandora, Prime music, Apple music was confusing?

Wait till we further fragment market making most content out of reach unless you pay absurd amount of monthly fees.

Or you know, unless you get fed up and just start to pirate.

This is the new "Cable"... It will be ridiculous. Maybe Disney, Amazon and Google will buy everything and only have 3 subscriptions.

 

[slamscaper]

Devs DO make the most on PC though. It's by far the biggest platform.

Piracy spikes when PC Gamers feel they are getting shafted. When you treat PC gamers like thieves, expect your game to get pirated. When you make it a PITA to play your game, expect it to get pirated.

I don't pirate games but I can see why people do. I straight up don't buy games that require me to jump through hoops.

I never said that devs don't make the most money on PC. I said "if they made what they SHOULD be making," which you can go back and read if you like. I did not edit it, I said that for a reason.

The guy that posted about his awesome pirated collection that's all in one place (sorry sounds like bragging to me but that's my opinion I guess) thinks piracy doesn't cost the devs a cent. But this isn't about it costing them money, which it obviously does. The main problem is that piracy forces game publishers to punish all of us for the bad eggs among us. This is why we have such intrusive copy protection schemes to this day, most of which border on rootkits. Buying on Steam doesn't make you safe, as most of the popular games have extra DRM included.

I started having an issue with COD:WWII recently. It was working fine just a few months ago and now it won't launch. I've seen many issues caused by DRM and this just hits all the textbook signs of a DRM issue. Another $60 game I bought that I can't play right now.

If you think pirating games all the time is okay, then you really need a morality check. It's not the wonderful, creative programmers that make all these games we love forcing this intrusive copy protection. It's the execs and the suits that are greedy and care only for money. Don't blame the game devs for this. Blame the publishing division of companies like EA.

 

[slamscaper]

As for the rest of your diatribe... feel free to show me some evidence that piracy has cost a game developer one lousy cent.... every study tends to back the fact that piracy actually increases awareness and sales of titles...

There is absolutely no need for me to post any proof of this. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.

The very fact that the largest game publishers spend millions and millions alone on DRM proves that piracy does in fact cut into their bottom-line. What? Do you think they just pay out all this money to prove a point? Do you think none of them has tried putting in simple CD checks in the past and deciding not to spend millions on DRM (Blizzard tried this with Oblivion and it was MASSIVELY PIRATED)?

The bottom line is they wouldn't be spending all this money on DRM unless they had to. They are run by shrewd execs that look at the bottom line with a fine tooth comb. Piracy is always an issue and they have many researchers out there giving them numbers on pirated games. Do these numbers actually reflect lost sales?? Of course not. But they do reflect lost revenue nonetheless and it's enough to cause them to make our lives hell.

So this is why I don't pirate games. Ever. In fact the only time I've torrented a game is with Crysis because the version I bought will no longer install and play on Windows 10, thanks to the old Securom DRM that prevents it from loading from a DVD. I had to use a simple DVD crack to get around it. But I paid for the game beforehand and I was left with no other option.

 

[Squid Surprise]

There is absolutely no need for me to post any proof of this. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.

The very fact that the largest game publishers spend millions and millions alone on DRM proves that piracy does in fact cut into their bottom-line. What? Do you think they just pay out all this money to prove a point? Do you think none of them has tried putting in simple CD checks in the past and deciding not to spend millions on DRM (Blizzard tried this with Oblivion and it was MASSIVELY PIRATED)?

The bottom line is they wouldn't be spending all this money on DRM unless they had to. They are run by shrewd execs that look at the bottom line with a fine tooth comb. Piracy is always an issue and they have many researchers out there giving them numbers on pirated games. Do these numbers actually reflect lost sales?? Of course not. But they do reflect lost revenue nonetheless and it's enough to cause them to make our lives hell.

So this is why I don't pirate games. Ever. In fact the only time I've torrented a game is with Crysis because the version I bought will no longer install and play on Windows 10, thanks to the old Securom DRM that prevents it from loading from a DVD. I had to use a simple DVD crack to get around it. But I paid for the game beforehand and I was left with no other option.

So your “proof” is simply that game developers pay for DRM, and therefore piracy must cost them sales...
Did it occur to you that perhaps they USE piracy to artificially inflate the cost of their games?
Again, there is no proof either way..

I’m not arguing that piracy is “right” by the way. It’s illegal and immoral - after all, it's theft!

But I still haven’t seen anyone prove that it actually costs anyone anything.

By the way, here’s a study conducted a couple of years ago that actually found that piracy had no statistical impact on sales of games, books, music etc... it only affected new movie sales...

https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/09/displacement_study.pdf

This study was then hidden from the public... wonder why...

 

[Evernessince]

The guy that posted about his awesome pirated collection that's all in one place (sorry sounds like bragging to me but that's my opinion I guess) thinks piracy doesn't cost the devs a cent. But this isn't about it costing them money, which it obviously does. The main problem is that piracy forces game publishers to punish all of us for the bad eggs among us. This is why we have such intrusive copy protection schemes to this day, most of which border on rootkits. Buying on Steam doesn't make you safe, as most of the popular games have extra DRM included.

In most cases piracy does not cost the devs money. Someone copying digital bits from another person's computer doesn't affect them in the slightest. The only scenario where it might cost them money is if someone who would have otherwise bought the game pirated instead. You don't see a lot of this anymore.

I don't see how a few bad eggs is anywhere near a justification for DRM. Imagine, your chairs all require ownership and regional verification because a few people were making counterfeits. Ops, sorry your friend can't sit in that chair today. You have exceeded the number of daily friend use. I feel so bad for the suits having to erode consumer rights so they can pursue maximum profits. Boo hooh, they only get to collect up until 70 years after their death.

I started having an issue with COD:WWII recently. It was working fine just a few months ago and now it won't launch. I've seen many issues caused by DRM and this just hits all the textbook signs of a DRM issue. Another $60 game I bought that I can't play right now.

And this is an example of a legitimate use case for piracy. It seems to me you are screwed over more by the lack of consumer rights then pirates.

If you think pirating games all the time is okay, then you really need a morality check. It's not the wonderful, creative programmers that make all these games we love forcing this intrusive copy protection. It's the execs and the suits that are greedy and care only for money. Don't blame the game devs for this. Blame the publishing division of companies like EA.

I don't see how arguing against DRM instantly makes one "pro-piracy".

If you want the suits to stop the DRM shenanigans, vote for someone who will give us digtal goods rights.

 

[CharmsD]

There is absolutely no need for me to post any proof of this. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.

"...this is why I don't pirate games. Ever. In fact the only time I've torrented a game is with Crysis"

Emotional rationalization for piracy.

because the version I bought will no longer install and play on Windows 10, thanks to the old Securom DRM that prevents it from loading from a DVD. I had to use a simple DVD crack to get around it. But I paid for the game beforehand

We all do that when we steal our digital stuff.

Add a cherry on top!

I was left with no other option.

Inigo Montoya speaks

 

[CharmsD]

And this is an example of a legitimate use case for piracy. It seems to me you are screwed over more by the lack of consumer rights then pirates.

They have support channels, I expect you know that.