Activision Blizzard removes its games from Nvidia GeForce Now

[jnutt]

Next all the big game developers try to launch their own service so they get a double slice of the pie. You buy the game then pay another $10 a month to stream it. No I don't think so....

[Ttaskmaster]

Sadly, yes. Quite common in part of the product's sale cycle.

Sales speak, executive management terms and similar wibbly claptrap, ie talking [CENSORED], does not make something a proper word or term.
I know about being 'on board' with something, and being 'aboard' something.... but you can board or be boarded or be gotten/brought on board. You cannot be 'on-boarded'.

I'd stuff any service that insisted on using such hideous terminology, regardless of whether or not they're some former colony of the empire merely using regional variations of colloquial English phrases, like so many helpdesks.

[kalniel]

Sales speak, executive management terms and similar wibbly claptrap, ie talking [CENSORED], does not make something a proper word or term.
I know about being 'on board' with something, and being 'aboard' something.... but you can board or be boarded or be gotten/brought on board. You cannot be 'on-boarded'.

I'd stuff any service that insisted on using such hideous terminology, regardless of whether or not they're some former colony of the empire merely using regional variations of colloquial English phrases, like so many helpdesks.

English is defined by usage. If people use 'being on-boarded' as the term for going through an on-boarding process, which they do, then it's a real term.

Trust me, I hate it, and I tend to flag it when I encounter it in official communications, but I frequently get overruled.

[Ttaskmaster]

English is defined by usage.

And that's why people like you and I make such efforts to slap down this Management Buzzword claptrap, stop 'em misusing and abusing our beautiful words!!

[QuorTek]

You do own the game with the Nvidia one. To play streamed you just log into your steam/battle.net/whatever on the Nvidia cloud machine and it pipes the game to your tablet/phone/whatever. It's only £5 for the Nvidia service too not £10.

Blizzard will have pulled out because they recon they can scam more money out of us, e.g. by only offering it on Stadia where you have to buy the game again to use there even if you already own 1 copy of it.

If you note I put the £10 within apostrophes, not to mention we all know from how netflix has gone about gradually increasing prices that the current price isn't going to stay that way when it becomes 'popular'.

I know you need to own the game first with this but at the same time it's still a subscription service to actually use it.....

i play OverWatch, but do I actually own it, or do I just get a license to play which can be withdrawn at blizzards choice?

I'm no lawyer but read the eula and you'll be surprised what most try to hide in there. Ultimately as it's primarily an online game blizzard can remove your ability to play at will due to banning you etc so.....

To answer that, you own the game, but they own the servers, so if you do not follow the ToS and eg. cheat they can exclude you from using their servers, you stillt own the game, but not able to use the servers it is on due to a violation.

[LSG501]

To answer that, you own the game, but they own the servers, so if you do not follow the ToS and eg. cheat they can exclude you from using their servers, you stillt own the game, but not able to use the servers it is on due to a violation.

I'm assuming you're replying more to the bottom part rather than the top part of that quote. But seeing as Overwatch is a primarily online game, having no access to the server (blizzard prevents third party servers last time I checked) basically means the game is no longer playable.

Blizzard have also been known to randomly ban players who haven't broken the tos too due to their 'algorithms' flagging the player...there was a linus tech tips guy who got incorrectly banned from WoW and made video about his experiences of getting it sorted, essentially he only got it fixed due to the fact he was on a popular youtube channel.

[nobodyspecial]

Cloud gaming is useless to me. Hope NVDA makes money on it (more R&D for gpus!), but I have as much interest in this as I do VR, which is ZERO.

[nacasatu]

Huge blow to Nvidia's service in fairness. I was enjoying playing Wow and Wow Classic on the TV downstairs using this and was going to sign up for the premium service but after this happened, not a chance.
Could not be bothered if it subsequently appears on Google stadia, that service is utter trash from google.
Shame though, real shame.

[Enverex]

Just to clarify to everyone here that doesn't know how this worked. This was very similar to a shadow PC, you logged into your own accounts on GeForce Now, e.g. your Steam account or UPlay account and played the games you already owned. You're essentially just renting the machine and bandwidth.

These companies that are "pulling out" basically shouldn't have any say in this. They're telling you that you can't play the games *that you have already bought*. Where you play them shouldn't be up to the publisher.

[kalniel]

Just to clarify to everyone here that doesn't know how this worked. This was very similar to a shadow PC, you logged into your own accounts on GeForce Now, e.g. your Steam account or UPlay account and played the games you already owned. You're essentially just renting the machine and bandwidth.

These companies that are "pulling out" basically shouldn't have any say in this. They're telling you that you can't play the games *that you have already bought*. Where you play them shouldn't be up to the publisher.

Back to the old multi-site license question - are you buying a game for use on one machine, or several, and does accessing it on a different machine but using a browser on that original machine, count?

[Saracen999]

Much of the complaints in this echo what I said about Steam, back in the early days. Personally, I will not, ever buy a game that requires any form of external zervice that can be arbitrarly changed, or be deactivated, or yiur access denied, at the whim, even in error, of a third party ( i.e. neither me, nor the game publisher.

So far, this hasn't happened with Steam on a large scale, but it could. Suppose Steam suddenly said "All previously free accounts will be subsciption-only from 60 days time, & $25 per month"

I can hear the howls of thise "owning" hundreds or even thosands of pounds worth of games that they now can't play .... unless they subscribe.

So it hasn't happened ... yet. But it could.

As far as I'm concerned, buying such games sets yourself up as a hostage to foutrune. Yet, millions do it.


In my personal case, as I have zero interest in online gaming (I dabbled years ago, and wasnt interested), I only ever play single-player games, multi-player games with at most 3 friends, in our homes.

And I am not, as I said when Steam started up, under any circumstances buying into even either of those where it requires online "verfication" or "activation" just to play a game I've bought on my own PC.

So, increasingly, new games became ofc-limits to me and pretty much every new release seems to be now.

Which is why, once I was told about DRM-free sites like GOG, I wait for it to come out there, .... if it ever does. If not, oh well, I'll play something else.

I's kunda funny, in a sad way, to see several if my "What-if" scenarios, back in early steam days, coming to pass, albeit not with Steam.


On the other hand, uf a game is online and playing it requires online resources, then it's fair enough that those resources either come packed into the game's cost, and any time limit on "free" resources is known to the buyer at time of purchase, or that the need for an online subsciption is similarly known to the buyer whe they buy, along with a minimum period for which the service will be avsilable.

In which case, caveat emptor. Oh, and read the T&C's or EULA before buying. If you don't, and get stung, you know who to blame. As always, know what you're buying before you buy it. As the barrister that taught my introductory consumer law course said, before buying a horse, walk round it and make sure there's a leg on each corner.

[DanceswithUnix]

As far as I'm concerned, buying such games sets yourself up as a hostage to foutrune. Yet, millions do it.

Most people aren't buying games long term, they play for a couple of months and then move on. If it stops working in 3 months, I think the average user won't much care, which makes the whole hostage thing a bit low leverage. Like they took my old underwear hostage. Fine, if you are going to bring them back please launder them first, otherwise I'll just buy some new ones elsewhere.


Edit: This whole thing smacks of "commercial reasons". It would be rather like Nvidia to demand that theirs is the only streaming service that Blizzards' games appear on. I mean, you can log into Blizzard games from anywhere, they really don't care. Or perhaps Nvidia are demanding payment from Blizzard to include their games.

[philehidiot]

As far as I'm concerned, buying such games sets yourself up as a hostage to foutrune. Yet, millions do it.

Most people aren't buying games long term, they play for a couple of months and then move on. If it stops working in 3 months, I think the average user won't much care, which makes the whole hostage thing a bit low leverage. Like they took my old underwear hostage. Fine, if you are going to bring them back please launder them first, otherwise I'll just buy some new ones elsewhere.

I buy games for the long term. I've played Monkey Island, Colonization, Wing Commander Prophecy, Freelancer, etc all fairly recently. I've got COD MW2 on my PC (actually, had, I'm currently half way through a blank slate upgrade and Windows 10 is being a prat) as well as Metro 2033, Portal 2 and so on. If I bought a game for £30-50 and it just stopped working, I'd be livid.

The whole concept is like your monopoly box having a combination lock on it, changing every use and for which you must ring the company for the unlock code and permission to play every time. Then the company just closes down the phone line and you're left holding a box which is now worthless. My COD fiasco is an example of this - there was NO need for an internet connection to play the online stuff. At all. The "reasons" are all just to justify DRM. If their service isn't quite working right, you can't use what you have bought.

My other concern is that, in times where companies are becoming increasingly political, are they going to decide they don't like your politics or something you said on Tw*tter and just suspend your account, revoking access to all your purchased games? Because that would not be out of character for these companies, especially as we're seeing even Paypal and MasterCard take this route. I'm embroiled in the whole Brexit thing (although I avoid it on here if I can) and so it just takes one person to be a prat and report me for something they dislike and for the company to bow down (this is one reason why my mum begged me to not do any of the media appearances I was asked to do). It has been seen many times before and it's a matter of time before some prominent gamer gets hit.

[Codex]

Ah the joys of competing 'subscription' services where the 'owner' of whatever it is (we don't actually own subscription stuff) can just pull it whenever they like..... usually due to 'money' and the only people that end up being screwed over are the subscribers.

All these 'it's just £10 per month' packages soon add up

Agreed.

Young people growing up these days end up owning NOTHING. Subscription this, subscription that. Life in the fast lane.

Spotify, Netflix, PCP Cars and now commodity gaming hardware as a service.

Time machine, anyone? We need to go back!