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Cloud Graphics Games

Nvidia's GeForce Now Is Losing All Activision Blizzard Games (theverge.com) 75

Posted by BeauHD from the not-supported dept.
Nvidia's GeForce Now is a cloud gaming service that lets you play games stored on dedicated GeForce graphics-enabled PCs across a wide array of devices. While it lets you play PC games you already own, the game publisher must allow it on the service. "Today, Nvidia is revealing that Activision Blizzard is no longer playing ball, pulling down its catalog of games including Overwatch, WoW, and the Call of Duty series," reports The Verge. From the report: That means one of the service's biggest publishers, as well as its Battle.net catalog of games, will no longer be available just a week after the service's formal launch -- a launch that was already missing many games from Capcom, EA, Konami, Remedy, Rockstar and Square Enix, all of which seemed to have pulled out after Nvidia's beta period ended. Nvidia wouldn't tell us why this is happening now, but it's strange, because Nvidia previously told us it was contacting every publisher ahead of launch to make sure they were OK with their games staying available with the service. Did Activision Blizzard reneg on a deal, or did Nvidia fail to get permission? We're waiting to hear back from Nvidia; Activision Blizzard didn't respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, Nvidia says it hopes to work with Activision Blizzard to bring the games back, but the company confirmed to us that things are pretty cut-and-dried for now -- you shouldn't expect them to magically reappear after a few days (or even a few weeks) thanks to a deal. Nvidia also declined to tell us whether it'd be open to sharing a slice of its subscription fees with publishers, citing the quiet period before its earnings. It's true that Blizzard, at least, has an EULA that specifically prevents users from playing a game on cloud gaming services, but that doesn't seem to explain this move. Activision's EULA doesn't contain anything of the sort, and again, Activision Blizzard didn't seem to have any problem with it during the GeForce Now beta.
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Nvidia's GeForce Now Is Losing All Activision Blizzard Games More

Nvidia's GeForce Now Is Losing All Activision Blizzard Games

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  • Can you guys just really... just... just stop it. Seek some professional therapy. You clearly have unresolved mental issues that are affecting your work.

    • You're addressing the addicts, right?

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        Blizzard longs for the days when people were addicted to their games. Distant memories now.

        Blizzard no longer has any modern games. HotS was their best attempt to catch up with MOBAs, and that flopped hard. They completely missed the bus on battle royale games. They've never had a platformer, roguelike*, problem-solving game, soulslike, crafting survival game with zombies, or any of the other trends that have come and gone in the past 5-10 years. They just don't have a lot going for them.

        *Many, many ye

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Errtu76 ( 776778 )

          rogue is not a roguelike these days.

          Unless you're still playing Angband (or the numerous variants), like me. Last updated 08-2019, so fairly recent.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by lgw ( 121541 )

            Seems we have to call those "classic roguelikes" these days; otherwise people assume you mean Spelunky or something else with no apparent relationship to Rogue. It's as bad as "RPG".

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          They were on a quest for this quarters profits. That means milking as much profit as possible from them whilst investing next to nothing in them. It's called profit and those quarterly profit numbers look really good when you are not spending anything on new games or improving old ones. They got addicted to those profit of milking old games for as much as possible and now find themselves stranded, bad reputation for updating old games whilst still selling them and new game development well not much there.

          S

        • Blizzard [...] They've never had a platformer

          Why doesn't The Lost Vikings (1992; GBA rerelease 2003) count?

          And are there widely recognized definitions of what makes a game a "classic roguelike" or a "modern roguelike"?

          • Blizzard [...] They've never had a platformer

            Why doesn't The Lost Vikings (1992; GBA rerelease 2003) count?

            See also: Blackthorne

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by lgw ( 121541 )

            A "Classic roguelike" is what we're forced to call games like rogue. Otherwise, a "roguelike" is a game like Spelunky or Enter the Gungeon or the like, what we used to call an arcade-style game. The only real overlap with Rogue is procedural content generation (i.e., too lazy to design levels).

            • I think it has to have progression to be a roguelike. Procedural generation is not enough.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by lgw ( 121541 )

                Most roguelikes don't have any meaningful progression within a given "life", unless you count loot as progression (which it kinda is, I guess, but not what people usually mean). Most roguelikes simply don't have stats, so there's nothing to hook progression to.

                Some roguelikes have a sort of progression between "lives", but many don't. They're just what we used to call "video games" with no genre - platformers or schmups where you die and the game's over, start from scratch. Since there's a whole generati

                • If it doesn't have at least equipment progression (like FTL) I don't think it's a roguelike.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by lgw ( 121541 )

                    I'd agree with that, equipment-wise. The term "RPG" has lost it's original meaning and now means "stats with progression". Rogue was an RPG in that sense, but most roguelikes aren't. That in particular is why I don't much care for "roguelikes", while I enjoyed many "classic roguelikes".

    • Next week they'll be announcing their own streaming service at 49.99 pcm or some crazy shit.

    • They merged with Activision. Companies usually get shittier in a merger. I can them Activeterd now. They reduce head count but they never reduce it in legal, only people who matter leave/are "let go".

  • Who the fuck cares? Get a life, save the world.

  • the amazing boardgames that are out there.

    • cool . maybe it really is time. What are some great 2 player board games out there that should be checked out ? Obviously chess, backgammon and go but anything for folk that want something new ?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kalpol ( 714519 )
        For board games, we've had a lot of fun playing Quacks of Quedlinburg and regular old Trouble/Sorry. Also good old card games, gin rummy, etc., oh and Uno maybe?

  • what happens if you buy an game and they lose the (Score:3)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @09:09PM (#59718018)

    what happens if you buy an game on an cloud system and they lose the rights do you lose the game? Get to keep it till they stop updating it? No refund? Steam key given?

    • Let's put this in another perspective

      "When the mainframe service you are using to play that hot ASCII Star trek game loses the rights to host that game, do you still get to play the game when you phone in with your teletype? No refund? Paper and dice version mailed to you?"

        Cloud gaming is just the modern version of teletype and remote mainframe.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Xenx ( 2211586 )
        That would be true of other cloud gaming services, but Nvidia isn't selling the games. They're providing a service upon which to play games purchased elsewhere. If a game is pulled from Nvidia, you would only lose the option to play the game on Geforce Now. You would still retain your license through whichever service it was purchased.

        • They're providing a service upon which to play games purchased elsewhere.

          Except games have been coded client server or requiring some server back end for 20 years already, so of course there would be conflicts. That was kind of the point. That is what matchmaking was about when Pubs/devs killed dedicated servers, the actual multiplayer is sitting on some colocated machine somewhere and without it your games multiplayer function dies. All modern games are already tied into "the cloud" they slowly boiled the stupid gaming frogs via rebranding PC RPG's as mmo's and all sort sof

    • Re:what happens if you buy an game and they lose t (Score:5, Informative)

      by Xenx ( 2211586 ) on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @09:58PM (#59718168)
      In the case of Nvidia, you own the game through your preferred supported service. You buy it on Steam, or other supported service, and then are able to play it on Geforce Now. If a game gets pulled from Nividia support, you would still have access to it on Steam.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        So you are buying hosting. This ought to not even require the game publisher's permission in the first place, as you are still just installing and running your game on a computer as a process or set of threads ("a game instance") which are dedicated to your use and just place-shifting –– by having super-long Keyboard and Monitor cables that happen to be miles long and go across the internet.

        I suppose this whole process is more convenient if the game publishers facilitate it, but it see

        • Yeah you're leasing a gaming computer from Nvidia. It absolutely shouldn't matter since you'd be using your own games, but I guess they wanted to play nice and check with the publishers first to maintain a good relationship. They wouldn't want to piss everyone off just to have them switch to AMD as their partner.

          I technically don't own the computer I'm typing this on either, it's my employer's computer (which might actually be leased from the supplier), so it'd be like Activision prohibiting me from playing

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          So you are buying hosting. This ought to not even require the game publisher's permission in the first place, as you are still just installing and running your game on a computer as a process or set of threads ("a game instance") which are dedicated to your use and just place-shifting â"â" by having super-long Keyboard and Monitor cables that happen to be miles long and go across the internet.

          I suppose this whole process is more convenient if the game publishers facilitate it, but it seems they ou

      • I think Nvidia also has their own platform, though I might be wrong and it might just be a frontend for Google's games service. But yeah, the main reason to use this is for Steam support (and maybe other things later on -- BNet was the only other supported service as of last weekend when I set it up, and that's gone now).

    • what happens if you buy an game on an cloud system and they lose the rights do you lose the game? Get to keep it till they stop updating it? No refund? Steam key given?

      Gamers bent over for "cloud gaming" 20 years ago with ultima online, everquest and world of warcraft, this lead us to steam. You don't seem to get modern games have been coded criminally for 20 years already, most games people care about have some kind of client server in them and the industry has beeen making everything harder to crack via denuvo, which was bought by irdeto and they are planning a big push towards encrypted computing, along with microsft. They want all apps to "live in the cloud" (aka

    • This is definitely problem with Stadia. If the service shuts down you're potentially SoL as there isn't a procedure or even a promise of replacement licenses on other non-defunct services. GeForce Now however is just a service that allows you to play games you already own trough other services like Steam, Battle.net (where all the Blizzard titles "live"), Origin and the Bethesda launcher so all you lose if that service gets taken down is your ability to play your games on those services.

      What seems to hav
    • Because the service only allows you to play games through them while you purchase through your choice of store (i.e. Steam, Origin, battlenet.net, etc...) you keep it and play elsewhere.
      Will you need a computer to play it if you stop using Nvidia's Geforce Now? Yep.
      Will you lose it if you stop using Nvidia's Geforce Now? Nope.

  • I read the title (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Malays Bowman ( 5436572 ) on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @09:47PM (#59718122)

    And at first I was "huh?!" Then I realized it was just a crappy Stadia type service.

      I think they should just stick to making graphics cards.

    "Nevada Geforce pacemakers - feel the power!"

    • ">>>Nevada Geforce pacemakers - feel the power!"

      Oops. :}

    • Stadia should be getting more love here. It is not just a game streaming service but a platform by itself built on top of Debian Linux and Vulkan API and optimized for the cloud. So the fans of gaming on Linux should see some hope here. Games built for Stadia may be easily released in the future for regular Linux machines.

  • They asked for a comment (Score:5, Funny)

    by WolfgangVL ( 3494585 ) on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @11:07PM (#59718366)

    But blizzard thought it was a refund request and banned them.

  • Users are installing their own software with licenses they've paid for. Nvidia needs to ignore Blizzard, let users play any game they legally own.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dwedit ( 232252 )

      When it's your own computer, you can use any game streaming system you want to. But this is a Cloud service, so it's someone else's computer.

  • Political activism (Score:4, Funny)

    by skovnymfe ( 1671822 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @01:37AM (#59718658)
    If you rearrange the letters in "Nvidia Geforce Now" you actually get "Free Hong Kong". I can see why Blizzard would want nothing to do with them.
  • The cloud is all about getting user data, cataloging, and selling it. This gaming cloud has the exact opposite effect: sure, they can have chat logs of gamers all in one place with it, but that's nothing compared to a game running with elevated privileges on a local machine, able to scan all the user's files while they're distracted (or did you think StarCraft had Facebook integration because people were begging them for it?) This is a VM service which allows users to separate a good chunk of their data f
  • At first I though it'll be the technology itself (latency, bw requirement, image quality) that'll bring down this gaming model, but it's actually its own business model that will be its demise, that's a bit funny in this sense.

  • You could have infinitely fast bandwidth but you are still going to have high latency to round trip to a data center, process your key press and get results back. Even at lightspeed point to point laser or something the latency would still be higher than a local system by quite a lot. I can see this working for things like civilization and other slow paced games but I just don't see how you can have this technology work. So far the reviews of stadia and other services have seen exactly the same things. The

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Bengie ( 1121981 )
      A typical gaming keyboard has about a 20ms delay greater than premium gaming keyboard. My entire RTT was 15ms to Geforce Now. Most of the Geforce Now delay can be hidden in pre-existing polling delays. One such example is rendering the frame. If it takes 5ms to render the frame, that means the game is not processing inputs for 5ms. My 7ms one way delay suddenly feels like a 2ms delay. That 15ms RTT is now more like a 10ms RTT because 5ms of it is hidden. Of course a 10ms increase in delay is nothing when ta
  • Enough of this. If you cannot be bothered to install a video game onto your own local machine/console/device, you shouldn't be playing games at all.

    Can't run a game due to old hardware? Upgrade.

    We've already got the fiasco of single-player offline games that need an internet check-in. The more you let publisher take away your control of games, the sooner games won't even stick around long enough for nostalgia. Just a board of directors deciding on when a game you "own" goes away and can't be redow
    • GeForce Now ties into other services. Nvidia has their own platform, but you can also just straight-up log into your Steam account and play anything on there. The only thing it's missing for me is GOG (and now Blizzard, too). And they have a free option (which is what I'm using).

      I agree with your points, but they're not really applicable to GeForce Now, at least not any moreso than to something like Steam.

  • That's... mildly annoying (Score:4)

    by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @12:20PM (#59720092)
    I literally just set this up Sunday and was pleasantly surprised to see Blizzard's games there, most of which I enjoy quite a bit. It's a real let-down that they're taking this away. At least Steam will still work.

  • How would Blizzards Warden Client have worked with GeForce Now?

    • How would Blizzards Warden Client have worked with GeForce Now?

      It might not need to if the user doesn't have access to the underlying OS and doesn't install the game themselves.

  • I like to play in Destiny 2 and my friend advised me this site https://placetoboost.com/ [placetoboost.com] I tried to buy a pair of powerful rifles. I am satisfied with my result. I'll see what will happen in the next game.

  • Want to play blizzard games on linux, but there is no native client.
    Use streaming service as workaround, blizzard decides to pull out of streaming services.
    They certainly aren't interested in making money other then real windows users for some reason.

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