Bethesda pulls almost all of its games from Nvidia’s GeForce Now service

Bethesda is the latest publisher to withdraw its games from Nvidia’s new cloud gaming service, GeForce now.

As reported by Gamasutra, Nvidia made the brief announcement on the company’s forums, but did not expand on why all Bethesda games bar Wolfenstein: Youngblood had to be removed. Bethesda, too, has yet to publicly explain its decision.

“Please be advised most Bethesda Softworks titles will be removed from the GeForce Now service today,” a Nvidia representative explained on the official forums. “Wolfenstein Youngblood will remain for all members. Founders members can continue to experience the game with RTX On.”

Similarly, although players participating in Nvidia’s GeForce Now beta had access to games like Overwatch and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, all Activision titles have also now been removed following a “misunderstanding” between Nvidia and Activision. It’s since been reported that Activision had not given express permission for the games to be available to subscribers after the beta test opened up to the public on February 4th, 2020. Without this commercial agreement in place, Activision asked for its games to be removed.

“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,” explained a statement from Nvidia at the time. “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.”

GeForce Now, Nvidia’s new cloud gaming service, came out of limited beta a few weeks ago. As all 300,000 beta users transition across to a free membership tier, the company also announced plans to introduce $5/£4 premium membership – a special introductory price guaranteed for the remainder of 2020 – that offers the first three months for free. Players can also keep playing the games they already own and continue building libraries from the same stores you already use every day due to GeForce Now’s open platform.

Following numerous complaints from players, the company has since prepared a Q&A addressing why games are being pulled post-launch.

“Games on GeForce Now can come down temporarily while we perform maintenance, or indefinitely at a partner’s request,” the company explained. “Some publishers may choose to remove games before the Founders trial period ends. Ultimately, they maintain control over their content and decide whether the game you purchase includes the ability to stream it on GeForce Now.

“Countless developers and publishers are running with the opportunity to expand the number of gamers who can play their games by using GeForce Now. We have hundreds of thousands of members playing their favourite games on GeForce Now,”  Nvidia added. “We support the top free-to-play games like Fortnite, League of Legends, Warframe, and more. We just announced Cyberpunk 2077 will be available on GeForce Now the day it’s released, with ray tracing enabled. And there are plenty more that we’re working to onboard as quickly as possible, including new additions next week.”