Nvidia GeForce Now hit the streets like a month ago, and in what was a surprise to literally no one, it is the best game streaming service on the market right now. It's not without its flaws, though.
For starters, it seems like all kinds of developers are suddenly pulling their games from the service, from AAA heavy hitters like Bethesda to Indie developers like Hinterland Studio, which just yanked its game The Long Dark off of the service. Because GeForce Now lets you play games you "own" – something I'll get into in a bit – its a little discouraging that game developers can basically cut off access to games you've paid money for.
This whole thing throws into question whether or not you should invest your time and money into the platform. There are certainly people who think that game streaming is the future of gaming, but when you can't be guaranteed access to the games you have paid for, it's a future that I don't want to be a part of.
Let's get the good stuff out of the way
One thing I have to say before I start telling people to avoid GeForce Now is that it's actually pretty freaking great. I'll admit that our friends over at PC Gamer actually put it through the paces much more than I've had the chance to do, and they found that it has much less latency than Google Stadia. For a company like Google, which is practically synonymous with "the internet," it's super surprising that Nvidia could win in this area.
And, frankly, games have the potential to look much better on Nvidia GeForce Now, assuming that you're playing at 1080p (side note, Nvidia needs to work on getting a 4K version of GeForce Now running). This is largely thanks to the fact that you're running native PC versions of games, allowing for settings like ray tracing and DLSS that the AMD Vega-powered machines behind Google Stadia just can't do.
I also have to talk about the sheer amount of games available for GeForce Now, even if a lot of games keep getting sucked out of the service. There are so many PC games out there that GeForce Now has a potential game library that could absolutely dwarf any game console, let alone competing streaming service. But, therein lies the problem.
Keep it local
Because licensing is such a mess for both Stadia and GeForce Now, playing your games locally on one of the best gaming PCs is the best course of action right now. Don't get me wrong, the way that digital game licenses work means that game publishers can absolutely take away your games for pretty much any reason, but it's actually pretty rare that you're prevented from installing any game you bought on Steam on your own PC.
The way I look at GeForce Now at this time is that it's an excellent secondary service. If you have a MacBook that you're taking with you on the road, and you want to play your favorite game, it's an excellent choice. It's true that there are some gaming laptops out there that are getting extremely thin and light, but none of them are quite on the level of a MacBook Air – at least, not yet.
But, because the state of game licenses on Nvidia GeForce Now is so iffy right now, I can't advise anyone use it as their main gaming platform. The fact that you have to buy the games through Steam, and then hope that the game publisher doesn't pull the game from Nvidia's platform makes me nervous. I'll just come out and say that you shouldn't buy a game if Nvidia GeForce Now is the only way you can play it
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