Nvidia’s GeForce Now loses 2K Games titles, following Activision and Bethesda

Nvidia said today that game publisher 2K Games is pulling its library from the company’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service at 2K’s request. “Per publisher request, please be advised 2K Games titles will be removed from GeForce Now today. We are working with 2K Games to re-enable their games in the future,” said Nvidia community manager Cory Banks in a post on Nvidia’s forums. When asked for comment, Nvidia pointed The Verge to this February 20th blog post.

2K publishes the BioShock trilogy, Borderlands series, Civilization games, and NBA 2K series, among others. So the publisher’s withdrawal is a big loss for GeForce Now, which just left beta on February 4th. Nvidia is now offering a premium version of the cloud gaming service as a “public trial” for $4. 99 a month, yet the switch to charging customers for the service has instigated a wave of game removals.

2K pulling its games from the service follows the departures of Activision Blizzard’s and Bethesda’s games last month, meaning that many popular titles aren’t available to play on the newly-public service. 2K, Activision Blizzard and Bethesda allowed their games on GeForce Now while it was in beta, but that has changed since the service left beta and Nvidia started charging people money for the service (though there is still a very limited free tier of GeForce Now). In a statement to The Verge, 2K Games said it “requested its games be removed from GeForce Now, as a commercial agreement is currently not in place with Nvidia. ” In the case of Activision Blizzard, Nvidia reportedly never got permission to keep Activision Blizzard’s titles on GeForce Now after it left beta.

Presumably, Bethesda pulled its games from GeForce Now from GeForce Now for similar reasons, likely due to some form of licensing dispute. The promise of cloud gaming services seems great: stream all your games in high fidelity over the internet without having to worry about whether or not your computer, console, or phone have the hardware to run it. But like the hard-to-track content shuffling we see on streaming services, the early days of cloud gaming have shown that similar types of licensing issues may dictate what games you can actually stream. My colleague Nick Statt wrote a great article breaking down the situation that I recommend you go read to better understand the intricacies at play with a service like GeForce Now.