Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service looks to be a hit among players, but publishers don’t seem to want to play ball. After losing access to Activision Blizzard games following a licensing dispute earlier this month, news has now broken that Bethesda Softworks has pulled nearly all of its games from Nvidia’s streaming service.
This information was revealed in a forum post over on the official Nvidia website. According to the post, all but one Bethesda game has been removed from GeForce Now as of today. The full post reads:
“Please be advised most Bethesda Softworks titles will be removed from the GeForce NOW service today. Wolfenstein Youngblood will remain for all members. Founders members can continue to experience the game with RTX On.”
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While no explicit reason was given for the removal of Bethesda Softworks games, the issue is more than likely tied into licensing. It’s the same problem that caused Activision Blizzard to pull its games from the service just one week after GeForce Now left its beta period.
The issue can a little confusing, so here’s the synopsis: Nvidia failed to come to a new licensing agreement for Activision Blizzard games before its cloud gaming service went live. Without holding rights to stream the games, Nvidia was effectively charging players for access to Blizzard’s intellectual property. Of course, the most confusing part of this situation is that GeForce Now users have to already own these games in order to play them on Nvidia’s service.
It’s very likely that the same kind of situation has developed between Nvidia and Bethesda. Cloud gaming services are still relatively new, so wrinkles like this will certainly need to be ironed out over time. However, competitors like Google Stadia have an easier time with licensing since users can outright purchase games through the Stadia platform. Until Nvidia can sort out licensing concerns, we may start to see more and more developers shying away from GeForce Now.
