2K Games pulls out of GeForce Now, too

For Nvidia’s GeForce Now, the hits keep on coming. Or rather, going.

2K Games’ library is the latest tranche of AAA games to leave the fledgling stream-anywhere service. Nvidia announced 2K’s departure, effective immediately, earlier on Friday afternoon. “We are working with 2K Games to re-enable their games in the future,” the company said.

The loss of games such as Borderlands 3, Civilization 6, and three NBA 2K titles follows the very visible departures of Activision Blizzard and Bethesda Softworks in February, which took about two dozen high-profile games off the PC gaming service. Games from publishers such as Capcom, Rockstar Games, and Square Enix have also left GeForce Now, despite being available during a beta period that ended in early February.

Reached by Polygon, an Nvidia representative referred readers back to a Feb. 20 blog post acknowledging publishers’ control over the service’s content, while asserting that they “will bring games back as they continue to realize GeForce Now’s value.”

A representative for 2K Games did not return a message before publication time.

GeForce Now is a service whereby PC gamers may stream games from the cloud to computers, Android tablets or smartphones, or Nvidia’s Shield TV or Shield Portable devices. Users may only stream games they already own on another digital platform, such as Steam, Ubisoft’s uPlay, or the Epic Games Store.

GeForce Now had been in beta since 2015, starting with support for the company’s Shield devices, before including PC platforms in 2017. The service left beta on Feb. 4.

Soon after, Activision Blizzard asked for its games to be removed; Bloomberg attributed the takedown to the publisher’s desire for a formal commercial agreement with Nvidia regarding the games’ presence on GeForce Now. The same lack of a commercial agreement is believed to be behind Bethesda Softworks removing all but one of its supported titles from a library that numbered about 80 at launch.

GeForce Now offers free one-hour trial sessions to anyone, or a membership (with unlimited game time) that is free for 90 days, followed by $4.99 per month for the next nine months.

Earlier this week, Hinterland Studio founder Raphael van Lierop said that Nvidia never asked the developer’s permission to include The Long Dark in GeForce Now, and as such he had asked for it to be removed. “Please take your complaints to them, not us,” van Lierop tweeted on Sunday. “Devs should control where their games exist.”