Nvidia restricts sales and trades of bundled game codes

[HEXUS]

The GeForce Experience now performs hardware verification to check for a qualifying GTX card.

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[MercutioUK]

There's a good amount of these codes change hands. Folks see them as money off purchases or "well I have that game, it won't be wasted". It's not going to be huge amounts of their customers but... maybe enough that it's a bad idea imo.

[virtuo]

Game coupon codes offered as part of a qualifying GPU or PC purchase are intended for use by the purchaser.

So, I buy a card for my dad/kid/captor. By their rules, as the purchaser, I am entitled to the bundled game. But I'm not using the card.

I can see this being scrapped or bypassed in no time.

[cptwhite_uk]

DRM at the point of purchase. Why do this? I'm really struggling to see a reason it just seems like they're shooting themselves in the foot...it will only cause a backlash and bad feeling towards those buying Nvidia cards, and they're still paying the publisher I assume regardless, or maybe that's where I've got it wrong - does the publisher only get paid if the game code is activated?

[shaithis]

This is just like the "small print" on cashback offers.

They are hoping people will not take the offer up for various reasons and save themselves a few $$$.

What they just did instead though, is devalue their cards to many people. Ho humm.

[jim]

I understand why they've done it. The idea is to give you a game to play with your new graphics card, not an overly-complicated mail-in rebate.

But it's quite frustrating. If I'm buying a £200 graphics card, having £40 worth of games that I can sell on to others helps a great deal. All it does, as shaithis said, is shift the value proposition. I can live with that - may just make another card more tempting.

[LSG501]

Considering most people I know don't even install geforce experience this is going to be an interesting thing for them to deal with.

I don't need or want geforce experience installed, I have enough junk running on my system already, that I 'need' to run for other things to function properly, not to mention the potential tracking side of things that was recently added.

I can see a few sides of this issue:
Nvidia pays money for discounted software so obviously wants to stop the selling on.. or the games company have complained (doubtful if I'm honest)
Nvidia wants people to use their geforce experience for all that juicy personal data they can get...personal data is the new cash cow for a lot of companies.
What about people with SLI who get two games.... they really don't need two of them and tbh Nvidia got enough of the purchasers money already.
People may already own the game..
Someone might have bought you the graphics card like said above so you're not technically the person who purchased it.

[infraction]

The sad thing about these promotions is the fact you got to buy them from selected partners, before when I purchased a GTX 970 Amazon UK wasn't included meaning I lost out on a free copy of The Witcher 3. They do seem to be included now though although there are many of e-tailers that aren't still.

If they eventually move away from the retailers themselves having to hand out and deal with the key codes then this new system might make more sense than just a lock down.

[AGTDenton]

The price of the games they offer usually drop in the not too distant future so I personally wouldn't feel disappointed (they rarely include AAA games that are big sellers and keep their retail value, e.g. BF1). It is certainly in their interests and makes total sense, it stops rogue distributors and retailers dishing out codes without a sale.

In the cases where hardware has been bought as a gift, it doesn't take a genius to realise the ways round it.
Or for those that bought the card & intend on using it, you can still sell/giveaway the game, the first code is a Nvidia only code, which then Emails you the actual game code. There would be no connection between the 2 codes so you could still pass the game code on to someone else. I don't see that as an issue at all if you are trying to recoup some of the card costs.

[Ttaskmaster]

Mate buys a Titan X, doesn't want the games that came with it, gives me the codes because "You're gay/retarded, so you'll probably love this!" and I'm not gonna turn down a free game... well, I may, but that's beside the point.
The only way around it I can think of is to install his Titan, redeem the code and then put my card back in, although I assume there's DRM on it that will detect my older/lesser card and spit thhe virtual dummy out...

So yeah, you don't have to use the game with your new card, but no-one else may benefit from your purchase...

Meh.

[DanceswithUnix]

I'm really struggling to see a reason it just seems like they're shooting themselves in the foot...it will only cause a backlash and bad feeling towards those buying Nvidia cards,

Judging from the backlash against the way Nvidia insist on having their hardware dongle in G-Sync monitors, shenanigans with Physix, treatment of customers during bumpgate, the way they treat the open source community; really if people are still buying Nvidia at this point then they are clearly happy to have their chain jerked about for the pleasure of a few extra frames per second. When the hardware starts off so laughably overpriced the "value proposition" clearly isn't relevant.

A few people will moan, but there won't be a backlash.

[chinf]

Judging from the backlash against the way Nvidia insist on having their hardware dongle in G-Sync monitors, shenanigans with Physix, treatment of customers during bumpgate, the way they treat the open source community; really if people are still buying Nvidia at this point then they are clearly happy to have their chain jerked about for the pleasure of a few extra frames per second. When the hardware starts off so laughably overpriced the "value proposition" clearly isn't relevant.

A few people will moan, but there won't be a backlash.

I agree - for all the anguish on the forums it's still only a storm in a teacup. Most people will still continue to buy their products based on performance figures and reviews - or otherwise simply not have an alternative when buying pre-built systems from most system integrators.

[lodore]

When I purchased two 770 graphics cards to use in SLI I got two game codes. I redeemed one myself and gave another to a friend and then we could play online co op. If you already have the game I see no harm in giving the code to a friend and think it is stupid of NVidia to add this in. I no longer use GeForce experience as I hardly ever used the screen capture or other features and mostly used it to keep the graphics driver up to date. I see no benefit in creating a NVidia account just to use GeForce experience. if NVidia keep doing stuff like this then I am likely to get an AMD card when I get a new graphics card.

NVidia installs way to much crap with the NVidia graphics driver. I do not own a NVidia shield so do not need the NVidia shield streaming stuff.

thing if I am kind of torn as I had to take out an amd card from my parents computer due to the display driver not working with the windows 10 anniversary update and AMD not supporting that card anymore. I have an older NVidia card that is still supported 8800GT so put that in that pc instead as my parents only use the computer for basic stuff so didn't need a fast card and I had the card as a spare.

[Lorcaran]

Mate buys a Titan X, doesn't want the games that came with it, gives me the codes because "You're gay/retarded, so you'll probably love this!" and I'm not gonna turn down a free game... well, I may, but that's beside the point.
The only way around it I can think of is to install his Titan, redeem the code and then put my card back in, although I assume there's DRM on it that will detect my older/lesser card and spit thhe virtual dummy out...

So yeah, you don't have to use the game with your new card, but no-one else may benefit from your purchase...

Meh.

You could just login to your steam account on his PC of course, then register the game that way.

[GrahamC]

Nvidia are starting to interfere with my computer use a bit to much. mmm Vega here I come.

[OilSheikh]

Like others have said, I too sell off the bundled games to knock down the price of my shiny graphics card