One of the big bullet points for Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud-based game streaming service was the fact that it didn’t come with a platform specific library, and instead let its early users play games they already owned through the cloud.
At the very beginning, this meant that any game a player owned through select digital storefronts, (initially Steam, Battle.net, Epic Games Store, and Uplay) would be playable on the service. That pitch is changing, a post-launch shift no doubt influenced by the fact that many major publishers like Activision Blizzard, 2K, and Bethesda seemingly weren’t too keen on their games being playable through the cloud without their explicit go-ahead. Starting May 31, game makers and publishers alike will now need to opt into Nvidia GeForce Now compatibility, a process Nvidia notes in a blog post won’t cost developers a thing or require any game alterations on the dev side. It’s the company’s hope that a painless opt-in process will allow it to “build a robust catalog of PC games with full support from the development community,” and already it says there are 200 publishers and around 2,000 games signed on as streamable games, with more to be added weekly. For those curious, Nvidia has shared a current list of the games already opted in to GeForce Now, along with a rundown of games that’ll explicitly be removed from the service at the start of June.