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If you're an Nvidia GeForce Now Founder's subscriber, it's likely you're nonplussed over the continued losses to the cloud gaming service's roster. Many notable videogames and publishers have dropped from the service since it launched on February 4, 2020—apparently those holding all the cards are "still figuring out their cloud strategies"—and if that isn't a bad omen of things to come, I don't know what is. Why? Because Nvidia's service offers something akin to the PC gaming experience. It is (theoretically) open to all, it allows you to access the games you already own, and it is more or less a back to basics promise of a half-decent gaming PC in the cloud—it even offers RTX graphics for cheap. Without it, or those other services like it, the future of cloud gaming looks a lot more… exclusive. Nvidia was unlucky in its game streaming rollout. Just as the ball started rolling on its initially successful cloud gaming ambitions, and fresh out of beta, a couple of major publishers (Activision Blizzard, Bethesda Softworks, 2K Games) swiftly dropped out from the service, and even made quite a palaver out of it. It appears as though that sentiment only gained momentum from there. Further games have been pulled from the service since, and while many more have embraced it with open arms, there are some huge games notably missing from its cloud-compatible library. Nvidia's since adopted a less pro-active opt-in approach for developers and publishers on GeForce Now as a result. So what is it that makes Nvidia's service so frowned upon by publishers? I'd have to guess that it's merely the sheer size, scale, and monetary worth of the potential 'platform'. No one batted an eyelid for the many cloud streaming services that came before, despite being much like Nvidia GeForce Now—those that allow a user to hook in their existing libraries and play the games they own across a range of digital storefronts on hardware they couldn't otherwise afford or access. So you'd expect that it wouldn't matter whether you play your game on the hardware you own—a trusty gaming PC—or one that's rented to you and served up out of a server rack. You bought the game, right? That's yours and you get to say how you play it. Well, not so fast. Gaming licenses have never been straightforward. Do you own a game or a license to the game? Well, the answer is actually relatively simple: you own a license that allows you to use someone's software, as they intended. What that End User License Agreement (EULA) means for you, and what you're allowed to do and not allowed to do with it (such as modding), varies between platform and developer. Therein lies the thorn in Nvidia's side, and the stipulation that gives ultimate control to the publisher. And it's only a microcosm of a wider issue—if cloud gaming inherently relies on publishers and developers to specifically allow access to the videogames we own a license to, then it's going to run into burgeoning costs, exclusivity, and a lack of interest from gamers with access to an already fairly simple solution that (mostly) bypasses these issues: a physical gaming PC. For more please visit OUR FORUM.