I thought GeForce now was a “bring your own library” service? I think they can auth with steam directly and you can play most games available on the steam store.
It is. You can play a subset of games from Steam, Epic, Ubi Plus, and Game Pass -- if the publisher opted them in.
For Game Pass specifically, you don't own the games... it's a subscription service, like EA Play or Ubi Plus, that lets you play from a library of games as long as you're subscribed. Of those, several (but not all) are also playable on GeForce Now. You still have to have a PC Game Pass (or Ultimate) subscription.
Without GeForce Now, if you have PC Game Pass (the cheaper plan), you have to install and play those games on your own computer. If you have Game Pass Ultimate, you can also stream some of those games from Microsoft's cloud of Xboxes. They are inferior to Nvidia's offering, but the selection might be better as long as you don't mind lower resolution and having to use a controller for most games. You also get access to the EA Play subscription library that way.
Confusing, right? It's a pity. When GeForce Now first launched, you could play any game on it -- all of Steam was available -- but publishers started complaining I guess (who knows why? maybe they wanted to one day launch their own services, heh, good luck with that).
Notably, there were a few games that were Stadia streaming exclusives (like Red Dead Redemption and Elder Scrolls Online). Once Stadia died, there was no way to stream those anymore (unless you rent a whole virtual PC like Shadow.tech). Can't play those now, sadly.
There are a lot of streaming services now: First-party ones like Playstation Plus, Amazon Luna, Xbox Cloud, Ubi Cloud (via Luna).
There are third-party stream-a-game-directly ones that just launch you into Steam and/or the game directly, no OS maintenance required: GeForce Now and Boosteroid.
There are also "rent a PC" style streaming services like Shadow, AirGPU, probably others (including renting them directly from cloud providers, usually at an incredibly high price).
Of all those, GeForce Now offers by far the best performance and quality, because Nvidia both controls the supply of RTX cards and also has written some incredible software to support the streaming, enabling play at 4k/ultrawide/120 Hz/low-latency via Reflex, etc. It is also the best value in terms of monthly costs. Its primary downside is the limited library available; only some games are available on there (https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/games/).
>but publishers started complaining I guess (who knows why? maybe they wanted to one day launch their own services, heh, good luck with that).
They could simply want Nvidia to purchase rights to use their game. If you made a movie you wouldn't want random streaming services to be able to stream your movie without paying you for the rights to do so.
Geforce now doesn’t directly offer games. You need to pay to buy those via Steam or another store; you effectively login to a remote Windows desktop and get that streamed.
So, I don’t understand publishers’ complaints, people could only play games they paid for, and Nvidia provided the streaming service. It’s probably technically correct on the publisher side, but I feel Nvidia did nothing wrong there.
I don't understand this line of thought. What difference to the publisher does it make if I buy a PC or rent a Nvidia VM to play their game? They get paid through a sale, not based on what computer I play it on.
And those games are still playable on Shadow, Airgpu, etc., just as bigger headaches.
There are many titles I've purchased because they were available on GFN. (And many I didn't because I don't have a machine to play them on otherwise).
The publisher could, theoretically, double dip: Require a user to buy the game on Steam, and also require Nvidia to cough up the cash to list the game for streaming.
I am cynical enough about the games industry to say this is possible, even probable.
This is probably the “technically correct” part, but it still makes no sense. The publisher is taking away my rights as somebody who bought the game. How is that model impacting a publisher’s bottom line?
What’s next? Should I pay 2x a game for a SLI config with two cards on my PC?
It's not 1:1. If you stream a movie, you don't own it and you are probably not gonna go back and watch it again in most cases. With GFN you first have to buy the game yourself, so you're already paying the publisher. But these publishers are greedy...
