Nvidia’s GeForce Now service has lost access to yet more games, with Xbox Game Studios and Warner Bros. being the latest game makers to pull their titles from the service.
This means the likes of Gears 5, Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Forza 4 will disappear, along with Warner Bros. titles like Batman Arkham Knight and the Mortal Kombat series.
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The news follows moves by game studios such as Activision Blizzard, Bethesda and 2K Games to remove their games from the streaming service as well.
This is yet another blow to Nvidia’s GeForce Now service, which allows users to stream games from powerful remote Nvidia servers and play them on devices, such as budget laptops, that usually wouldn’t be able to run said games.
Losing the war?
The steady stream of titles leaving GeForce Now is a real blow to the service. When it launched it seriously impressed us – we certainly thought it was better than Google’s rival Stadia offering.
However, while Stadia has had its fair share of problems, the continued loss of games from GeForce Now could be an even bigger issue for Nvidia.
But why are developers and publishers pulling their games from the service? It seems that the biggest issue is with Nvidia not gaining the proper licences for using their games in the cloud. The games need the permission of the publisher to be included on the service. If Nvidia doesn’t have that, the game cannot be included.
Nvidia seems reasonably upbeat about the whole thing, however. In a blog post announcing the news, Nvidia’s Phil Eisler states that “we’ll be adding and removing games through the end of May. Behind the scenes, we’re working with digital game stores so publishers can tag their games for streaming on GeForce NOW, right when they publish a game. This will help us bring more games to the library, quicker, as well as provide a more stable catalog.”
It also claims that the majority of the most popular games on Steam are available on GeForce Now, and that will will add news games to the service every Thursday, with “larger batches throughout April and May” promised.
Ubisoft approves
While Xbox Game Studios and Warner Bros. games are disappearing, there is one publisher that seems to be sticking with GeForce Now: Ubisoft.
“Ubisoft fully supports NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW with complete access to our PC games from the Ubisoft Store or any supported game stores,” said Chris Early, senior vice president partnerships at Ubisoft.
This coincides with the complete Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry series coming to the service, with Nvidia claiming that “more Ubisoft games will arrive in the coming weeks.”
While this support is welcome, it doesn’t quite make up for the games that are leaving the service. Hopefully Nvidia comes to an agreement with publishers to get their games back on the service soon. We’ve contacted Nvidia for comment.
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