Ubisoft has thrown its weight behind Nvidia by pledging to “fully support” the company’s beleaguered GeForce Now cloud gaming service.
It’s been a rough couple of weeks for Nvidia. Since GeForce Now left its beta period just a few weeks ago, dozens of games have been removed from its catalogue from a number of high-profile publishers. These include 2K, Activision-Blizzard and Bethesda, the latter of which left just one game - Wolfenstein: Youngbloods - available on the platform.
This move, which Activision-Blizzard brushed off as a “misunderstanding”, 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.
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Raphael van Lierop, director of The Long Dark, wrote last week that Nvidia never asked permission to stream the game on its service: “Please take your complaints to them, not us. Devs should control where their games exist,” he said.
Ubisoft, however, has thrown Nvidia a much-needed lifeline by reaffirming its support for the controversy-sparking service. In a statement sent to Kotaku, the publisher said that it “fully supports” Nvidia’s GeForce Now with “complete access to our PC games from the Ubisoft Store or any supported game stores.”
“We believe it’s a leading edge service that gives current and new PC players a high end experience with more choice in how and where they play their favorite games,” Ubisoft added.
The state of GeForce Now
This leap of faith comes just days after Epic confirmed it was standing by the service, with the company’s CEO Tim Sweeney calling GeForce Now “the most developer-friendly and publisher-friendly of the major streaming services”.
“Game companies who want to move the game industry towards a healthier state for everyone should be supporting this kind of service,” he said.
Sweeny went on to confirm that not only will Fortnite be staying on Nvidia’s service, but that publisher will offer support for Epic Games Store titles, including exclusives, if developers are willing.
Nvidia also recently announced that CD Projekt Red’s upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 would be available on GeForce Now from day one.
Ubisoft’s vote of confidence will no doubt come as a relief to Nvidia, but it remains to be seen whether it will encourage other publishers to follow suit.
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