Bethesda and Activision have one reason to step away from Geforce Now, Greed

As it stands, there is no good reason for publishers to remove their games from Geforce Now. For starters, Geforce Now users need to own their games to play them using Nvidia’s streaming service. Geforce Now users have already paid for their games on PC. Geforce Now merely gives consumers the option to have their gaming PC in the cloud, rather than in their homes.  

Last weekend, Nvidia announced that the majority of Bethesda’s games catalogue was being removed from the company’s Geforce Now streaming service, leaving Wolfenstein: Youngblood as the only modern Bethesda game on the service. Even then, it is clear why Youngblood remains on Geforce Now, an Nvidia partnered title with support for Geforce RTX raytracing and DLSS. 

This news comes shortly after Activision Blizzard’s decision to remove its titles from Nvidia’s Geforce Now support list, making it likely that other publishers will soon follow suit.

Why are publishers pulling out of Geforce Now? The answer can only be greed. What Geforce Now offers is the ability for PC gaming to reach a wider audience, but it also stops publishers from getting its customers to purchase their favourite games again. Geforce Now can’t have a Skyrim re-release, and unlike Stadia, I don’t need to repurchase Destiny’s expansions to enjoy playing Shadowkeep on the cloud. 

If companies consider Geforce Now as a new gaming platform, it is easy to see why they don’t like it. New platforms typically mean new sources of revenue, and that isn’t what Geforce Now offers. What publishers forget is that Geforce Now has the potential to create new PC gamers, and that will give them new customers.