Nvidia has announced that Activision Blizzard has decided to remove their games from GeForce NOW.
“As we take GeForce NOW to the next step in its evolution, we’ve worked with publishers to onboard a robust catalog of your PC games,” reads a statement from Nvidia “This means continually adding new games, and on occasion, having to remove games – similar to other digital service providers. Per their request, please be advised Activision Blizzard games will be removed from the service. While unfortunate, we hope to work together with Activision Blizzard to reenable these games and more in the future.”
At this time, Activision Blizzard has not released a statement regarding their decision to remove their games from Nvidia’s cloud gaming service.
Practically speaking, this means that you can no longer play titles like Overwatch, Hearthstone, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and other titles that GeForce NOWsupported via its policy that allows you to own supported games via other storefronts and play them using the benefits of the cloud gaming service. The loss of those games put a noticeable dent in the service’s catalog of supported titles.
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Yet, you can’t help but feel that this is a bigger story that goes beyond just those games. In fact, this whole thing really touches upon two ongoing controversies/stories.
First, you have the controversy/debate that surrounds cloud gaming. Services like Stadia suffer from relying on a specific set of games that must be purchased via the Stadia store. GeForce NOW provides an interesting alternative that allows you to play games you already own, but as we see here, that approach can result in an increased risk of losing access to titles you were previously able to play. Decisions such as this show that the future of cloud gaming isn’t just about solving technological problems.
There’s also the matter of Activision Blizzard’s involvement in this situation. Blizzard has been drawing some heat lately over a variety of controversies, and the idea that they would pull their support for a more consumer-friendly cloud gaming service so soon after its official launch could be another bad look for the company. This could be tied to possible plans the company may have to release their own cloud gaming service, but we’ll have to wait and see whether that proves to be the case.
Matthew Byrd is a staff writer for Den of Geek. He spends most of his days trying to pitch deep-dive analytical pieces about Killer Klowns From Outer Space to an increasingly perturbed series of editors. You can read more of his work here or find him on Twitter at @SilverTuna014.