Nvidia's GeForce Now made a big splash last week: the game streaming service is giving Google Stadia
a serious run for its money
in the value stakes, and some of its features are fantastic. But if you
happen to cherish the platform's collection of Activision and Blizzard
titles, you're out of luck: they've been rather unceremoniously removed.
According to a spokesperson from Nvidia writing in
the GeForce Now forums,
the library of Activision Blizzard games, which included Call of Duty:
Modern Warfare, Overwatch, Diablo 3 and more, has been removed at
Activision's request.
"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," the
spokesperson said. "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."
It's
certainly not uncommon for titles to be added and removed to
subscription-based services. But for a publisher's entire catalogue to
be removed barely a week after a platform's launch... that's certainly
unusual. My only speculation is that Activision Blizzard must be unhappy
with the terms of its deal with Nvidia. Either way, this continues the
trend of
games suddenly vanishing we've seen across different stores and services in the last year, one of the perpetual downsides of digital distribution.
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