A Misunderstanding
Nvidia’s game streaming service, GeForce Now, was launched last week as one of the many companies throwing their hat into this new business. However, earlier this week, one of the biggest gaming companies, Activision Blizzard pulled their games from the catalogue unexpectedly. This meant big draws such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Diablo 3, and Overwatch can no longer be played on it. Even more confusingly for adopters of the platform, these games were all available during the beta for GeForce Now. What happened?
It looks like it really came down to communication issues for this one. With Activision’s games included in the early beta, Nvidia thought that meant that the agreement extended to the actual service itself. Basically, Nvidia thought their agreement meant one thing, while Activision Blizzard thought it meant something completely different. Even with corporations slinging millions of dollars around, miscommunications happen. So respecting Activision’s wishes, the games were pulled from the catalogue.
This was Nvidia’s statement on the issue:
“Activision Blizzard has been a fantastic partner during the GeForce Now beta, which we took to include the free trial period for our founders membership. Recognizing the misunderstanding, we removed their games from our service, with hope we can work with them to re-enable these, and more, in the future.”
So for the fans of Activision that have adopted GeForce Now, it looks like the negotiations are already underway. Hopefully, for those that expected the games on the platform, they can work something out. It would really suck if the reason someone bought onto the platform was suddenly taken off of it. With all these streaming services popping up left right and centre, I’m beginning to worry about too many different subscription services competing for titles. Just like how Netflix is no longer enough to watch all the hot shows online, perhaps if game streaming takes off we could be facing similar issues. Have you tried any of these platforms? What are your thoughts?
Source: PCGamer