Nvidia Corp. decided to pull Activision games from its service this week, leaving fans to wonder what could have possibly happened between the two parties.
Even tech giants like NVIDIA aren’t given special exemption from the occasional “stuff happens” problem.
Brace yourself, gamers. Nvidia abruptly dropped Activision Blizzard Inc. games from its brand new GeForce Now service.
On February 11, Nvidia released a statement that Activision had asked to remove its titles from GeForce, although leaving no further explanation behind the decision.
Seems like the video-gaming giant wanted to enter a commercial agreement with Nvidia before they take things forward from there. However, their situation today was because of a simple misunderstanding.
Activision took part in the beta test of the service. Nvidia thought it had sorted the right agreement in place, that their said agreement extended to the initial trial period even after GeForce’s Feb. 4 launch.
The online game-hosting and subscription service is now available to all players and the general public. GeForce Now is basically NVIDIA’s answer in hopes of rivalling Google’s Stadia and Microsoft’s Project xCloud.
The launch of GeForce Now is an attempt to lure players and customers away from rival gaming services run by major companies like Microsoft, Google, Sony, and Apple Inc.
Nvidia has also been giving a free 90-day trial to its very first customers, calling them the “founding members.”
Shortly after its release, Activision Blizzard pulled their titular games off the GeForce Now library, including Overwatch, World of Warcraft and the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare reboot.
This is not the end, though. NVIDIA is currently working on another agreement with the publisher in hopes of working “together to re-enable these games and more.”
Nvidia issued a statement:
“Activision Blizzard has been a fantastic partner during the GeForce Now beta, which we took to include the free trial period for our founders membership.”
They also further acknowledged the misunderstanding between the two parties involved:
“Recognizing the misunderstanding, we removed their games from our service, with hope we can work with them to re-enable these, and more, in the future.”
There’s also a growing speculation regarding how Activision Blizzard may have ditched NVIDIA for Google Stadia.
Regardless, there are plenty of other opportunities to consider at this unclear time.
For instance, Activision could partner up with Google to allow previously purchased games to be played on Stadia. It may also offer some of its games as free-to-play on Stadia. Or if anything, the company could be developing its very own cloud gaming platform to compete against GeForce Now, Stadia, and xCloud.
After the free promotional period, subscribers will pay a monthly fee of $4.99 if they want to continue streaming games from Nvidia-owned data centers.
