Nvidia's GeForce Now is losing game publishers at an alarming rate
posted Sunday Feb 23, 2020 by Scott Ertz
It was just two weeks ago that Nvidia finally took its long-awaited GeForce Now cloud gaming platform out of beta and certified it as ready for the market. When the platform launched, it was populated by games from nearly every major game publisher. In some cases, the platform had direct connections to developer platforms, such as Activision Blizzard's Battle.net and Ubisoft's Uplay.
However, in the past 2 weeks, things have changed. Within days of launch, Activision pulled all of their titles, and such the Battle.net connection, from the platform. This was a big public blow for the platform, as many players were excited about GeForce Now to be able to play Activision games in particular. While it seemed like a major problem for Nvidia, it was only the beginning. This week, Nvidia announced,
Please be advised most Bethesda Softworks titles will be removed from the GeForce NOW service today. Wolfenstein Youngblood will remain for all members. Founders members can continue to experience the game with RTX On.
And with that, another publisher disappears, almost entirely, from the anticipated platform, whose attraction was the large catalog of games. With it, popular franchises, such as Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, both properties that could have been big draws to the platform.
However, as these publishers pull out of the platform, it seems to have little effect on user growth. In fact, the company also announced that subscriber count has already hit 1 million. As part of that announcement, they also announced that Cyberpunk 2077 would be available on GeForce Now on Day 1. The important part of this announcement is that they are still successfully working with publishers to bring high-profile games to the service. However, the longevity of these relationships seems questionable, so changes are not only inevitable but also incredibly unpredictable.
