The news is going from bad to worse for beleaguered streaming platform GeForce NOW this week. Following the withdrawal of authorisation by Activision-Blizzard not long after launch, a second major publisher has taken away almost all of their back catalogue: Bethesda. Subscribers to NVIDIA's streaming service are no longer authorised to play titles from Fallout, Wolfenstein, Dishonored and The Elder Scrolls franchises - Wolfenstein: Youngbloods being the sole exception.



Ten days ago METAL GEAR SOLID V: The Phantom Pain and members of the Pro Evolution Soccer franchise were withdrawn by Konami. As of today at least fifty triple-A titles from these publishers alone have been removed, and the official support forum is replete with posts wondering which big title will be removed next.

GeForce NOW is widely seen as the superior alternative to Google's Stadia, both in terms of game support and quality of service, but that will be for naught if NVIDIA are unable to gain broad authorisation from game publishers. It may be that these publishers desire a slice of the pie for themselves (inevitably increasing prices) or are planning to create their own exclusive subscription streaming service in the future. Either way, this is looking less and less like a stop-gap measure than a drawing of battle-lines.



NVIDIA's major counterpunch has been an agreement between themselves and CD Projekt to bring Cyberpunk 2077 to the platform when the title is released later this year. That's not only great news for NVIDIA, it will also let fans enjoy the benefits of real-time ray tracing and other fancy additions without investing in expensive high-end hardware.

We should note that the traffic isn't all one direction. A handful of indie titles, such as Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem and Prison Architect, have been added to GeForce NOW since launch and Ubisoft appear to be happy with their games being available. Nonetheless, it would be wise to not buy any game if the only way you could play is through GFN, at least for now.

Hopefully this isn't a sign that game streaming as a whole will fracture like video streaming, where movies and TV shows are available exclusively through one of an increasing number of subscription services. We wouldn't bet on it though.