GeForce Now's New Opt-In Policy Wins Back At Least One Developer

Winter survival game The Long Dark was removed from Nvidia’s GeForce Now streaming platform back in March after its developer said the game had been added without their consent. Now it’s coming back, following changes to the service that make GeForce Now opt-in only.

“Back in March I decided to remove The Long Dark from NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW game streaming platform, as I disagreed with our game being incorporated into the service without our consent,” Hinterland CEO Raphael van Lierop wrote on the game’s website today. “This week, NVIDIA announced they are shifting to an opt-in program for getting games onto GeForce NOW.” As a result of this change, Lierop said The Long Dark will go back to being streamable on GeForce Now immediately.

Nvidia announced the policy change yesterday, saying that any developers that did not opt-in by May 31 would have their games automatically removed from the service. It’s unclear how many studios and publishers that have pulled their games from the platform will now be returning, but the new transparency definitely seems aimed at building trust back up following GeForce Now’s weird launch back in February.

Unlike other video game subscriptions, GeForce doesn’t come with free games. Instead, it allows players to stream the ones they already own to other devices, making it possible to play even the most demanding games, such as Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, on less powerful hardware. A lot of companies seemed to have been caught off guard by the service’s rollout, however, with the likes of Activision, Bethesda, and others promptly pulling support in the weeks after it went live.

The new policy also comes alongside the launch of Steam Cloud Play’s beta, which provides streaming support for some Steam games. That service is also opt-in only. For now it only works with GeForce Now, but Valve could one day decide to roll Steam Cloud Play into its own competing streaming platform.

Despite Nvidia’s new-found transparency, GeForce Now continues to lose games even as others are added. While many developers are following Hinterland’s lead, others, like the creators of Celeste, Endless Space 2, and Darkest Dungeon, haven’t yet. The exodus of big publishers hasn’t stopped either, with Sega being the latest to pull its games. It’s hard to commit to a paid subscription when you don’t even know what you’ll even be getting from one month to the next.