Activision-Blizzard Pulls out of GeForce Now

We didn’t report on it because we’re bad people, but last week, Nividia GeForce, the creators of some of the more well-known graphics cards used in PC gaming, launched a direct competitor for Google Stadia, called GeForce now. This streaming service operates a lot like Google's, as it allows you to buy a game and play it remotely on one of Nividia's remote servers so you get the best possible graphics and, ideally, the best performance. It’s giving Google quite the run for its money, as while Google struggles to obtain a library of three digits, Nividia’s current library is currently “hundreds” strong and is looking to grow stronger still.

However, that library is getting a little bit smaller today, because, after a week on the market, Activision-Blizzard has decided that their games – including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Overwatch, and Diablo 3 – aren’t a good fit for the platform and have since pulled them.

"As we take GeForce NOW to the next step in its evolution, we’ve worked with publishers to onboard a robust catalog of your PC games. This means continually adding new games, and on occasion, having to remove games – similar to other digital service providers. Per their request, please be advised Activision Blizzard games will be removed from the service. While unfortunate, we hope to work together with Activision Blizzard to re-enable these games and more in the future. In addition to the hundreds of games currently supported, we have over 1,500 games that developers have asked to be on-boarded to the service. Look for weekly updates as to new games we are adding."

As for why Activision-Blizzard has made this decision, we can only speculate. It’s doubtful they’re planning to release a competitor, but it’s hard to agree they would have signed up for the program in the first place if they didn’t know the terms of the agreement. Were they, perhaps, less than excited about the platform’s first-week performance…?

No idea.