A Clear Downside to Streaming Consoles

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djc
Posts: 279
Joined: September 24th, 2016, 3:42 pm

A Clear Downside to Streaming Consoles

Postby djc » February 24th, 2020, 12:37 am

As an owner of a NVidia Shield I've been playing around with their streaming GeForce Now gaming service. A new downside just emerged for me to the whole streaming console discussion. Full disclosure - I am much more of a game collector than I am a game player so I don't spend a lot of time playing modern games.

When previously talking streaming consoles and DLC, the talking points have always revolved around what if the console's manufacturer (e.g. Google for the Stadia) decided to pull the plug on the servers rendering the console useless. Well, I recently logged into my NVidia Shield just to play a level or two of a game I had saved in my library. Well - turns out the game is no longer there. Apparently the game publisher (Activision) decided to pull all of their content from the NVidia service due to a dispute about licensing fees (very similar to how network TV stations have disputes with cable companies). Bethesda has now followed suit and removed all of their content as well.

So - even though I had the game in my library and was halfway through it, poof it was gone because the game publisher decided to pull it. Because everything is streamed, there was never a copy of the game downloaded locally so pretty much up a creek without a paddle so to speak.

Much like when streaming television/movie services came into existence and received pushback from movie studios, we are seeing the same thing happen now. I am sure eventually they will find a way to make it work but kind of frustrating and will make me think twice about investing time in a game on the platform for the foreseeable future.

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