Update: we've got a screenshot of the email in question, and now we can confirm that this is official.
Nvidia has reportedly told GeForce Now Founders that they’ll have their initial billing payment date pushed back until June.
An apparent email sent to Founders was posted on the ResetEra forums, where Nvidia apparently said: "As you can imagine, we're experiencing a substantial increase in the number of GeForce Now players and their amount of playtime.”
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“While the service continues to grow, we have decided to take this opportunity to show our early Founders members our appreciation, and will not begin billing until June 2020. Your first charge date has been extended. Please check account.nvidia.com for more information. Stay safe and happy gaming."
Assuming this is real, it's a nice gesture on Nvidia’s part, but the reasoning behind it remains unclear. It could simply be a goodwill gesture in wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, with Nvidia following in the footsteps of the likes of Sony which has been offering free games to its 100 million-plus PlayStation 4 users.
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The move could also be in response to the lackluster reaction the GeForce Now service has received so far. Ever since the streaming service first launched in February this year, big-name publishers, including Activision-Blizzard and Bethesda, have been removing their libraries of games.
This is believed to be due to the fact that there was no commercial agreement between Nvidia and publishers when GeForce Now exited its free closed beta.
Things got worse for Nvidia this week, with Warner Bros and Xbox Games Studios announcing they were also abandoning the service. This means early adopters of GeForce Now have lost access to the likes of Gears 5, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and the Mortal Kombat series.
With this in mind, Nvidia’s apparent goodwill gesture could be an attempt to try and placate early GeForce Now subscribers while it attempts to beef up the service’s dwindling games library.
In a blog post this week, the company said that it’s “working with digital game stores so publishers can tag their games for streaming on GeForce Now, right when they publish a game,” adding that this will help it “bring more games to the library, quicker, as well as provide a more stable catalog.”
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