Activision Blizzard’s library of games disappeared from GeForce Now shortly after the game streaming service was officially launched, but it seems like that might have been Nvidia’s fault, after all – in terms of a misunderstanding over the terms of the deal between the two firms.
At the time, Nvidia didn’t give an actual reason as to why all Activision Blizzard’s titles were dropped from the service, but in a statement noted that this was “per their request”, and that it was “unfortunate”.
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However, Nvidia has told Bloomberg that the reason for the move was a misunderstanding in that it believed the agreement with Activision Blizzard regarding its involvement in the beta of GeForce Now applied to the initial post-launch trial period of the service, too (in other words, the first three months of going live).
Evidently this wasn’t the case, and Activision Blizzard wanted some kind of a commercial agreement (which sounds sensible enough, let’s face it) before proceeding to the full launch of GeForce Now, and this didn’t happen – hence the publisher requested its games library to be pulled.
This seems like a pretty big oversight, one way or another, but it perhaps does give some hope to GeForce Now subscribers – those who signed up to play the likes of the Call of Duty games, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Overwatch, World of Warcraft and many more besides – some hope that the issue might be resolved.
When Nvidia first announced that the games had been dropped, the company said that it hoped “to work together with Activision Blizzard to re-enable these games and more in the future”.
Nvidia repeated that sentiment in another statement published by Bloomberg: “Recognizing the misunderstanding, we removed [Activision Blizzard’s] games from our service, with hope we can work with them to re-enable these, and more, in the future.”
Returning to the fold
So perhaps, at least theoretically, there is no reason why these games might not return, given that Activision Blizzard was certainly happy enough to be part of the beta test. But of course an agreement will need to be hammered out, and who knows how many hurdles might stand in the way on that front. The use of a word like ‘hope’ in Nvidia’s statement doesn’t inspire full confidence, either.
If the situation was rectified, that would go a long way to restoring the faith of those who specifically subscribed to GeForce Now and bought games like the latest episode of Call of Duty (Modern Warfare) to play via the service (those whose own PCs aren’t up to the task of running these titles).
Remember that the key to GeForce Now is that you’re effectively paying to rent a powerful gaming PC you can connect to remotely – you still have to buy all the games you wish to play yourself (and they have to be supported by GeForce Now, of course).
The incident has served to highlight one of the major potential weaknesses of Nvidia’s service, in that if publishers do turn around and decide they no longer want to be involved with GeForce Now, those who bought specific games to play solely on the streaming service are obviously out of luck.
Via PC GamesN
