Nvidia pulls plug on its GeForce Partner Program

[mtyson]

Happy bank holiday weekend all. But before we head off into the traffic jams for the weekend I thought this was interesting but I don't have time to add it to the main site news:

Pulling the Plug on GPP, Leaning into GeForce - GeForce Blog

A lot has been said recently about our GeForce Partner Program. The rumors, conjecture and mistruths go far beyond its intent. Rather than battling misinformation, we have decided to cancel the program.

GPP had a simple goal – ensuring that gamers know what they are buying and can make a clear choice.

NVIDIA creates cutting-edge technologies for gamers. We have dedicated our lives to it. We do our work at a crazy intense level – investing billions to invent the future and ensure that amazing NVIDIA tech keeps coming. We do this work because we know gamers love it and appreciate it. Gamers want the best GPU tech. GPP was about making sure gamers who want NVIDIA tech get NVIDIA tech.

With GPP, we asked our partners to brand their products in a way that would be crystal clear. The choice of GPU greatly defines a gaming platform. So, the GPU brand should be clearly transparent – no substitute GPUs hidden behind a pile of techno-jargon.

Most partners agreed. They own their brands and GPP didn’t change that. They decide how they want to convey their product promise to gamers. Still, today we are pulling the plug on GPP to avoid any distraction from the super exciting work we’re doing to bring amazing advances to PC gaming.

This is a great time to be a GeForce partner and be part of the fastest growing gaming platform in the world. The GeForce gaming platform is rich with the most advanced technology. And with GeForce Experience, it is “the way it’s meant to be played.”

[DanceswithUnix]

no substitute GPUs hidden behind a pile of techno-jargon.

This is a joke right?

[Corky34]

While it's nice to hear they've pulled the plug it would be much better to know they're not going to return to trying to dictate terms from upon high.

I understand their intentions but brand definition should be a choice made by each ODM, if they don't like how ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte or any other company are branding their products then tough, if you don't like it stop selling them your product and sell it yourself so you have full control.

Also i would be interested to hear how their going to repair the damage this has already done, AFAIK many ODM's have already started bifurcating their brands, are they now going to roll back on those plans? Is Nvidia going to compensate them for their time and money? Because if not what motivation is there for ODM's to cancel the plans they already have in motion.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I don't even understand why they were trying to do it - its not like Nvidia isn't doing well,and are ahead in a number of areas like laptop discrete cards. Even if this was targeted more towards Intel,its not like Intel couldn't play dirty either!

[Xlucine]

GPP had a simple goal – ensuring that gamers know what they are buying and can make a clear choice.

"Any customer can have a card painted any color that he wants so long as it is green."

[Output]

A lot has been said recently about our GeForce Partner Program. The rumors, conjecture and mistruths go far beyond its intent. Rather than battling misinformation, we have decided to cancel the program.

Translation: We got caught, so now we're trying to save face without admitting to our mistakes.

Glad to see that my prediction came true.

[Lanky123]

Sounds like a US or EU regulator has gotten hold of one of the contracts and politely suggested to Nvidia that they might want to reconsider. Doesn't feel like a PR damage-limitation backtrack as they'd pretty much weathered that storm already (and let's face it, they've weathered worse in the past and come through...).

[DanceswithUnix]

Also i would be interested to hear how their going to repair the damage this has already done, AFAIK many ODM's have already started bifurcating their brands, are they now going to roll back on those plans? Is Nvidia going to compensate them for their time and money? Because if not what motivation is there for ODM's to cancel the plans they already have in motion.

I do wonder if they have already caused enough damage to AMD that they are happy to reverse GPP, if cards are already sent out to the channel with the new branding then reverting back to main brand could cause further confusion for AMD parts.

This whole GPP thing could be a South Park plot, the Underpant Gnomes was a classic.

[Corky34]

Translation: We got caught, so now we're trying to save face without admitting to our mistakes.

If only they had, IMO the worst part about it is they don't see anything wrong with what they did, they don't see it as a mistake, they even imply they're reluctantly canceling it because "we" as customers were to stupid to understand and didn't know what was good for "us".

The blog post has obviously been written by their PR team and maybe that's why what they say has brushed me up the wrong way, but honestly I'm more annoyed by what seems to be the insincere contriteness of it all, they've completely failed to understand why their customers would be annoyed.

I do wonder if they have already caused enough damage to AMD that they are happy to reverse GPP, if cards are already sent out to the channel with the new branding then reverting back to main brand could cause further confusion for AMD parts.

All the advantages none of the cost.

[Fizzl]

Just feels like these days they are always up to some shenanigans to try and lock people in.

They already ensured I won't be buy Nvidia for a while after the whole charging £50-150 extra for a the g-sync version of the screen vs freesync. I don't replace screens nearly as often as graphics cards and I'm now bound to AMD until it is worth going above 3440x1440.

[Corky34]

[outwar6010]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comment...n_gpp/dygd4tw/

"NVIDIA told me I would be cut off if I published the GPP story. Since I did that, they will not reply to any of my emails, so I suspect that bridge is burned forever.
AMD is obviously happy over it, as you would expect.
As for AIBs, we are not into new video card season yet, but I would guess that it is very possible that NVIDIA will forbid them from sampling HardOCP with NV GPU cards.
It will be interesting if NVIDIA pushes the AIBs to pull advertising from my site, which I figure will happen too.
So all in all, it is likely this will put an end to HardOCP, but I knew that when I published the story. Not crying over spilt milk here, just discussing the facts around the situation."

This was a reddit post from Kyle Bennet who originally broke the story.

[kalniel]

Bonkers. If what nVidia said was even half true they'd be more than happy for AMD cards to be labelled equally and would rule out half of their own cards from being considered gaming cards.

[Corky34]

It's sort of funny how the guy who penned that blog post (John Teeple) has only ever made two posts, one introducing GPP and one trying to explain how we misunderstood its intention.

I'm wondering if "partnership programs" are common place in the tech industry as when i looked into Mr Teeple's history he's worked for Seagate and seemingly introduced the Seagate Partner Program Premier while there, it sounds remarkably similar to GPP, and he used to work at Intel who, going on the video from GN, seem to have their own partnership program.

Are "partnership programs" a John Teeple thing or is everyone doing it?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Hmm:

https://videocardz.com/76645/nvidias...reement-leaked
https://twitter.com/VideoCardz/statu...642876928?s=19

[scaryjim]

I was prepping a reply about how that NDA looks OK to me, but then I realised the reproduced document has two paragraph 3's. If that's the quality of NV's legal documentation ….

Anyway, even if it's a genuine nvidia document it's really not that bad at all. No liability for anything that's already entered the public domain, for anything that's known or disclosed to the recipient without restriction on the disclosure, or that's been independently developed - which I guess would cover benchmarking results? Nothing obviously heinous in there.

The "solely for the benefit of NVidia" only applies to information that is still under NDA - which no-one should be reporting anyway. Once you're allowed to report on it liability under the agreement is explicitly waived, so you can say what you like.