Nvidia GeForce Now being abandoned by 2K Games

What’s going on the GeForce Now side?

“At the request of the publisher, 2K Games is being removed from GeForce Now today. We are working with 2K Games to offer games again in the future,” Nvidia said on the official forum.

So far, many publishers have removed their games from GeForce Now, including Activision Blizzard and Bethesda Softworks.

2K Games Also Removed From GeForce Now

Raphael van Lierop, director of the popular survival game The Long Dark has a bone to pick from Nvidia’s GeForce Now game streaming service. Lierop said that the studio had asked Nvidia to delete The Long Dark from their service, adding that the graphics card and technology company had not sought permission to host the game. This question calls into question what privileges a gaming company may have when a service such as Nvidia’s GeForce Now tries to sell access to their product. “Sorry to those who are disappointed you can no longer play #thelongdark on GeForce Now,” Lierop tweeted. 

Sorry to those who are disappointed you can no longer play #thelongdark on GeForce Now. Nvidia didn’t ask for our permission to put the game on the platform so we asked them to remove it. Please take your complaints to them, not us. Devs should control where their games exist.

— Raphael van Lierop (@RaphLife) March 1, 2020

“Nvidia didn’t ask for our permission to put the game on the platform so we asked them to remove it. Please take your complaints to them, not us. Devs should control where their games exist.” He added, “[Nvidia] offered us a free graphics card as an apology, so maybe they’ll offer you the same thing.”

Is there a legal aspect to this?

Business lawyer Richard Hoeg is also agreed with Lierop, developer of The Long Dark, and thought that Nvidia should have demanded the consent of the developer. “I think Nvidia thought that they could convince developers/publishers of the value proposition of participating in “Now” and that just hasn’t coalesced, particularly with big publishers that may have their own streaming solutions in the works,” he told and added, “As you know, a developer owns the copyright to their game, and they don’t lose the rights associated with that copyright when they license their game to a ‘buyer. And games are, in general, licensed and not sold, with terms related to that license applied to the ‘buyer.’ Most of these are known or otherwise non-controversial (‘you won’t reverse engineer this product,’ ‘you won’t use it to post-speech we find hateful.’ But some are probably less well known. Most licenses are going to say (some version of) ‘you have the right to play a single copy of the game on a personal computer/system in your control’ and you can’t use your copy for “commercial access, use your copy to run an arcade, etc.’ So in this case, the Long Dark folks (and probably Steam, GoG, Epic above that too) have similar language in their EULAs, and Nvidia probably should have gotten permission.”

And then GeForce Now did a statement as…  

“As we approach a paid service, some publishers may choose to remove games before the trial period ends,” the post reads. “Ultimately, they maintain control over their content and decide whether the game you purchase includes streaming on GeForce Now. Meanwhile, others will bring games back as they continue to realize GeForce Now’s value (stay tuned for more on that).” 

To play the game in GeForce Now, you must already have the game. Nvidia probably didn’t consider adding games to the system’s library as users already need to buy the game, but not all publishers and developers agree.

I seem to hear you ask who’s next. I’m also curious about it. We will watch and see it all together.