Tuesday, April 21st 2020
NVIDIA GeForce Now Loses More Publishers, Xbox Game Studios and WB Games Wave Goodbye
NVIDIA's GeForce Now game streaming service has been a bit of a hit and miss lately, with some of the bigger publishers like Activision-Blizzard, Bethesda, and 2K games revoking availability of their digital game libraries on NVIDIA's service. Possible reasons for those events were unknown and the platform did suffer from it. Some speculations were that the publishers were going to switch their preferred online streaming service platform or build their own. So far it is still a mystery. However, it seems like there is no end to the pain, as some very big publishers decided to revoke their digital libraries as well.
Big names like Microsoft Xbox Game Studios, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Codemasters, and Klei Entertainment have all decided to stop offering their games on the GeForce Now game streaming platform. This is very much a major disappointment and another big setback to the platform, as now you can not play any of the titles from these publishers. Titles from the games series like Halo, Gears of War, Forza, Dirt Rally, Batman and many more, are now not available. It remains to be seen if these publishers announce a move to another streaming service, so we have to wait.
Source:
The Verge
Big names like Microsoft Xbox Game Studios, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Codemasters, and Klei Entertainment have all decided to stop offering their games on the GeForce Now game streaming platform. This is very much a major disappointment and another big setback to the platform, as now you can not play any of the titles from these publishers. Titles from the games series like Halo, Gears of War, Forza, Dirt Rally, Batman and many more, are now not available. It remains to be seen if these publishers announce a move to another streaming service, so we have to wait.
42 Comments on NVIDIA GeForce Now Loses More Publishers, Xbox Game Studios and WB Games Wave Goodbye
It's hardware. They don't gain from you owning your PC. You don't have to pay them for gaming on it (yet!).
@TheLostSwede used the perfect wording for this. They forbid you to game on particular rented hardware.
I could still buy a VM with a GPU, setup something like Parsec and stream my games. I could also ask Parsec to automate this process for me.
Parsec doesn't pay game studios anything.
Nvidia is big and rich. And game producers try to monetize. It's basically blackmail. What profit? Do you actually know anything about GeForce NOW?
They provide the infrastructure. If you want priority, you pay. If you're OK with waiting in line and gaming on "leftover" VMs, you can use it for free.
You bring the game.
I see you like slopes. So here's an analogy.
GeForce NOW is like a skiing slope. You can wait in line and use the lift for free or pay a fee and get in a priority queue.
You bring your skis or snowboard.
Do you think the lift operator should pay a fee to Atomic or Fischer? On the basis that if there were no skis, no one would use the lift? Really? Yes, there are installed on a server. In exactly the same way it's profiting from people running games on PCs. Because most wouldn't buy an expensive GPU otherwise. Same for AIBs, for gaming mouse makers and all that.
So should Nvidia pay gaming studios a fee because they create the market?
What technically makes it possible for studios to block NOW, is how the games are delivered.
It's an automated process. Nvidia creates a container image - a "base" that is cloned for each user who wants to play. That's why not every game is available immediately - Nvidia has to prepare it.
Nvidia does it like this because it's a lot more optimized and just works better. It also means your gaming VM doesn't have to be kept between games. Each time a new container is started and populated with your saves/settings.
And, of course, it means the servers can't be used otherwise. Like: for "free" mining.
Alternatively, Nvidia could offer us bare Windows VMs with GPU and just provide software that channels the video output. They would have to somehow block people from using them for other stuff.
You would have to log in, upload the installer, set everything up yourself. That would be extremely unattractive and slow. And a lot more expensive.
It's not cloud gaming in the sense that the game you pay for is only available through that service, so once the service goes bust, you lose the game.
I can still play all the games I paid for through Steam, Origin, Epic, etc. on my PC, even though I played them on GeForce Now as well. This is not the case if you pay up for Stadia etc. so huge difference.
As far as profiting, so is Amazon and Microsoft then, as they run a ton of third party software on their servers. What if RedHat or MySQL would say that they didn't have the right to run their software on their services? It would be an outrage on the internet never before seen.
Conventional rules don't apply to them. Also if you find and exploit in their services or games and report it you will be banned and possibly sued. And god forbid selling used games or reselling digital versions (no way). Game publishers do a lot of things ass backwards compared to most companies.
In terms of advantage for end users, I can see that, but one does not exclude the other here. I agree it can be an advantage much like @TheLostSwede is saying... but that does not remove the long term effect and goal of this service. It doesn't exist for your pleasure. It exists because Nvidia gets another USP, and it gets that by eating from the food tray of publishers. Its not strange to me that publishers don't allow this and I don't see it as damaging to customers either. You've never had this, so you're not losing a thing. But... once you have it, will you accept going back to NOT having it? And who is to blame for you not having it? The publisher? How does that work with brand image, for example?
And as for the argument about what can or cannot run on servers... how many games nowadays allow you to have your private servers? That reality is history for quite some time now. Why would NOW be different?
Its also wrong to compare consumer grade gaming to enterprise grade cloud. Different markets with different realities. Its quite strange to understand why for example MS pulls out 'because they have game pass', when in fact cloud services for gaming are popping up left and right and allow publishers new ways to monetize their content. Nvidia is simply trying to get their piece of that pie in their own way. Legally, I still buy all the games as a product and not as a service. The fact that product is licensed and has numerous non-legally binding BS in a EULA is no factor of importance. Its an owned license and with it comes a legal obligation. Publishers will need very good reasons to breach that contract. You're damn right it is fraud, and that is why this nonsense is pushed into EULAs and not into the actual purchase contract. And it is also the reason pubs are very very conscious about when they officially drop and lock game support. Its also a headline piece and will create shitstorm and maybe even legal action. These headlines are very rare, for those reasons.
So I'm not worried about that at all.
What worries me, is that a cloud based gaming service is not even ownership of the license at all. THAT is where you lose all your rights as a buyer of a product, and where you are reduced to a user that gains access to something, hopefully, as long as it is deemed necessary for reasons unknown. I know that NOW is something different, but that answers your idea about when I last bought a game. I actually did a week or so back on EGS. Purchase with receipt, of a digital product. Not a membership of some weird game club ;)
Note also that even with the big push to online gaming, its still very possible to play almost every half decent game (that is not a yearly cash grab-) without an internet connection. It works offline, just fine. If you are about single player you can have a near infinite offline backlog, even. And that includes games that really like to introduce online components, too. The amount of devs cocky enough to force always online is extremely low, and mostly found among the big publishers where the quality of games is not exactly improving. Not my loss...
Good luck taking the publisher to court.
You mean just like Netflix, Prime Video, etc? People don't seem to mind too much, as long as it's cheap enough.
Still, you most likely need to install some third party game launcher software on your computer to even install that game. Besides, most "retail" copies of games seems to be a code on a sticker, not a disc with content any more.
A class action is never far away and we've already seen how gamers can literally destroy game sales even with just a public outrage. I'm not worried that there is broad consensus when suddenly a popular or mildly popular game is no longer delivered... Even that is a force no publisher wants to fight.
All of this also highlights the importance of piracy, and how it helps protect our rights. The gist of it: once we have the code, rest assured we will access it no matter what DRM you deploy. That message is loud and clear and no single DRM has managed to really stop it.
As for the comparison to video streaming. Different beast. How many people are keen to watch the same stuff over and over again? That is what games do: run the same stuff over and over again. For hundreds of hours perhaps. No new seasons, no problem. So the apparent benefit of streaming quickly evaporates. We don't need new content delivered to us, we just want the same content every time.
Netflix is mostly about the content, but there's a hardware aspect as well: storage and exposing to multiple clients. You don't have to keep all these huge files, you don't have to move them between devices and transcode. That's all part of the service.
Gaming streaming doesn't have to include the actual content. Nvidia isn't selling you the game. They only provide the infrastructure.
You're borrowing a computer - just like you would rent a car or a hotel room.
Unless of course you're now going to say renting rooms makes no sense and the bad hotel corporations want us to own less stuff. And that we should buy a house for each holiday and sell it afterwards. Do you? :)
It's one thing if it was a private server-like game rig owned by the user and the user just connecting to it to stream their game to their current platform, but it becomes a different story when it's a company doing the same thing and hoping to profit off of renting the hardware. If one noticed; while GFNow was still in trial, and truly free (no money to Nvidia), the publishers had no issue with letting them serve as borrowed gaming hardware. But the moment Nvidia started trying to charge, many publishers nope'd right out.
At this point, it looks like the only way for GFNow to survive is to straight-up charge for "Basic, Advanced, Elite, and Founder" tiers, with a major portion of the fees being used to pay for whatever special licensing/agreements are worked out with the publishers. Something like:
- Basic costing 7 USD = 2060-level hardware + 2 Hour time limits
- Advanced costing ~15 USD = 2070-level hardware + 6 Hour time limits
- Elite costing ~30 USD = 2080-level hardware + 12 Hour time limits + priority service
- Founder costing ~60 USD = 2080 Ti-level hardware @ + 24 Hour time limit + priority service
It gets steep fast, but it might be the only way for it to work unless Nvidia wants to return to being a free rental rig service and make no profit. For many, paying only their ideal tiering fee on top of whatever big name games they buy off Steam and being able to play it on a toaster that can at least run GFNow is a steal, since they're only renting out the hardware when they need it and it lasts a full 30 days.User brings the license. When you start a game on NOW, it asks a game distribution service you've linked (like Steam) for the necessary license.
So:
- Nvidia doesn't own any license,,
- each active user has a separate license - the one he bought on another platform.
So it's transparent to the game producer whether you play on NOW or on your PC. You paid for the game and you play one session at a time. You can't share the license with someone else.
Game studios make the same amount of cash. Nothing changes for them.
You, instead of buying an Nvidia GPU, buy a cloud service that replaces it.
Similarly to how you can buy a workstation or rent a VM in the cloud. You can install your Oracle DB, Photoshop or Matlab on either. It makes no difference to the software producer. You paid for the license. So what if NOW was about actually renting physical computers? You call them, they ship you a PC for $5/month, you log into your Steam account, install games and play.
Would you still say that it's OK for game producers to ban this?
As someone else mentioned elsewhere, Nvidia found a legal loophole, and hoped to legally exploit it. If anything, this loophole might encourage game publishers to offer yet another sales tiering, a "rental license" that's only usable with GFNow. That license could come either in the form of a cheaper game that is locked to GFNow, thereby effectively turning GFNow into a "console" players rent (like the good old days of renting a Playstation or Super Nintendo from Blockbuster), or as a 5$ "DLC Unlock" that adds cost to the base game but also unlocks use on GFNow in addition to the home user's PC.
Or, the game publishers can take a page from the corporate software world and force Nvidia to pay up for a kind of usage permit, regardless of the fact that the user has their own license. It'd be like how universities pay up for software like Matlab, Photoshop, Office365, and then offer access to students and faculty either for a reduced fee than a regular private license, or free. In both offerings, the individual private license-keys are usually locked to 2 PCs/tablets, and the devices registered with the assigned university email to discourage multiple installations. They likely wouldn't only for the reason that Nvidia's forced to ship you the hardware, at the risk of it being lost, stolen, or totaled, and is physically present in your home (and would likely cost far more than 5$ a month to rent). Basically, it's become a physical part of your private life, much like your phone, console, or home theater, and would not violate whatever nebulous concept of a personal license they have for their games. Same way PC games can be installed on several PCs at your home and they don't bat an eye (most of the time).
All that said, I'm all for a game streaming service like Steam's own streaming capability or GFNow, but Nvidia's loophole exploit is likely to be "patched" by game publishers looking for a bit more $$$, especially if Nvidia is using the publishers' games to advertise their own rental/streaming service (which in retrospect, could be another part of it; wanting Nvidia to pay up in order to use their games to advertise GFNow, as that's what GFNow does rely on to sell itself).
Do you think nvidia will be TOO sad if all this effort for Geforce Now nets them a Nintendo contract for the next Switch hardware? I doubt nvidia cares too much about the niche market that streaming games people already own would have been.
Everything about Geforce Now screams testbed for big companies to use to market their own solution.
Nintendo Now, Uplay Now, Epic Game Store Now, etc.
"clearly" - so you've clearly seen it. I haven't. They aren't different.
VM is just a way to run software on a computer. You can buy a single-user Photoshop license and install it on whatever you want: on your PC (bare metal OS or in a VM/container) or on a server (bare metal OS or a VM/container). They don't care. You paid for it. You just mustn't share it (which would make them sell less).
You've confused that with server licenses that let you run multiple instances and give them to multiple users. It's a totally different being. Someone did somewhere - not a great argument.
There is no "legal loophole". Once again: Nvidia isn't the license holder. Seriously, I'm unable to add anything here.
You, as a user, bring a license. They just let you use their machine. What you're describing here doesn't exist.
Universities use volume licensing - they join a program (paid or not) and redistribute licenses to students and employees.
GeForce NOW doesn't hold the license and doesn't distribute it. License comes from a license distributing platform (like Steam). You pay for it.
I can take my student Matlab license and install it on my PC. But I can also run a VM on Google Cloud and install my Matlab there. And Google doesn't have to pay for my Matlab. I brought my license.
And identically, I'm bringing my game license to GeForce NOW. Nvidia just provides a VM.
Its the same with cloud based video. Netflix, Amazon Prime... the tentacles reach deep into these industries. But they were just cloud services, right... wtf happened?
What is happening is that middle men are becoming new content providers, and the overall trend is taking power away from the original content providers that got those services their success in the first place. Netflix only provided infrastructure and series we used to access in other ways. Their market share exploded when they went abroad and brought much wanted content to other continents, while also fleshing out the local/regional content. They created a service we can't get around too easily, and then they started producing their Netflix Originals.
Do you see the trend? In the meantime, Netflix monthly fees are now rapidly exploding as quickly as their market share used to do. Easily over +10% increases per year.
I'm questioning whether those ways of doing business are going to benefit us in the long run, and we're already seeing the problems, slowly but surely.
Cloud offers a loophole just like many other internet based developments have in the past, and people/companies exploit them. NOW Is another example. The other movement in the market for gaming, being EGS and competition in digital distribution, perhaps now we can understand why publishers are so eager to join that little club now. Its a safe haven where they can keep their business as usual, and not into these strange deals that cannibalize their business. For a publisher the basics are simple: invest in game, maximize its profit. They don't need all that other crap on top, in fact, we gamers also don't.
They're probably the last store "keeping it real" regarding tangible consumer ownership rights in a post physical-disc world and given the ongoing "future direction" push for 100% ownerless rentware4life the industry is heading in with streaming / online DRM / Games As A Service, I'm sure glad I have a NAS full of a few hundred offline installers of the best of the past 30 years classics triple backed up regardless of what happens to future lootbox-saturated rent4life multi-player cheat-fests.