42 PCWorld MARCH 2020NEWS ACTIVISION BLIZZARD PULLS GAMES FROM GEFORCE NOW
Nvidia’s GeForce Now lets you play PC games across a wide variety of devices.you can play something as graphically
uncomplicated as World of Warcraft on your
MacBook with the settings at maximum.”
Fortunately, GeForce Now remains an
outstanding value proposition. While Stadia is
limited to a couple dozen titles that won’t
work on any other platforms, Nvidia’s service
still supports nearly 400 games, with new
titles added every week. You can also install
another 1,000 or so “single-session” games
through Steam, which haven’t been officially
optimized for the service yet, but can still be
played on-demand, with Steam cloud saves
tracking your progress. Since Activision
Blizzard’s biggest titles live in the company’s
own Battle.net client, don’t expect that to
work as a side-door here.
Fingers crossed that Activision Blizzard
and other holdout publishers like EA decide
to play nice with GeForce Now—and again,
Nvidia’s service only lets you play games youalready own and paid for on other platforms.
It’s not an all-you-can-eat-buffet subscription
like Netflix or Hulu. Activision isn’t losing out
even if the company decides to start its own
rival cloud gaming service. GeForce Now is
more like playing a game you already own on
another PC, just one in the cloud. If you’re as
bummed about this decision as we are, your
best course of action is reaching out directly
to Activision Blizzard’s support (go.pcworld.
com/blzd) and letting them know it,
especially if the decision prevents you from
playing games you’ve purchased.
In the meantime, if you need to level up
your hardware to be able to play Activision
Blizzard games you used to play over
GeForce Now, be sure to check out our guide
to the best graphics cards for PC gaming (go.
pcworld.com/grcr). Local games aren’t
disappearing anytime soon, as this headache
proves.