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.
