Nvidia, the company that makes graphics cards you can't afford anymore and keeps vying for status as the world's most valuable company, is taking a page from Xbox's book and announcing a confusing change to its GeForce Now cloud gaming service that includes a monthly cap on the hours you can play games. As many people are saying in the comments to the announcement, maybe it's time to build a PC.
I will be honest that after writing the lede above I had to look up exactly what GeForce Now is, and reaffirm that it is not one of the many Nvidia things my graphics card installed on my computer. Like Stadia (RIP) and Microsoft's xCloud, GeForce Now can let you stream games your hardware might not be able to support. It has a bunch of tiers, some of which now have new names and new limits.
Buried in an announcement that leads with new games being added to the service and the ability to stream in 1440p is this tidbit:
At the start of next year, GeForce NOW will roll out a 100-hour monthly playtime allowance to continue providing exceptional quality and speed — as well as shorter queue times — for Performance and Ultimate members. This ample limit comfortably accommodates 94% of members, who typically enjoy the service well within this timeframe...
Up to 15 hours of unused playtime will automatically roll over to the next month for members, and additional hours can be purchased at $2.99 for 15 additional hours of Performance, or $5.99 for 15 additional Ultimate hours.
Current paying members won't have the cap imposed on them until 2026, and Founder members won't be subject to the cap. Members can only roll over a limited amount of unused hours, with Nvidia writing that "The most one can have at the beginning of a month is 115 hours." Nvidia has also renamed its "Priority" membership to "Performance," just to make things more confusing.
The idea that this 100-hour-a-month limit works for most players may well be true, and GeForce Now already has some time limits on how long your play session can be, but the idea of this is wild to me. Many commenters on Nvidia's Reddit post call this what it is--enshittification--and worry it's a herald of worse things to come. According to The Verge, this has been done in lieu of raising fees, which you could see as a bit refreshing when compared to services like Disney+ and Amazon Prime that added ads, removed password sharing, and raised prices.
But it's still chilling. The idea that this service, which you pay to access, can now just restrict your access, all while trying to sell you on how this is fine and actually the service is better now, is shining up how stupid Nvidia thinks you are through corporate speak. To burn users this way on the heels of announcing a market valuation of $3.6 trillion feels especially egregious. Nvidia is all-in on AI these days; this change, like crypto mining before it, feels like further proof that the company is moving away from regular users who just want to play games on their damn computers to serve the worst people in the world and chase the latest planet-torching trend.
With the possibility of hardware prices spiking massively if Trump has his way with tariffs, cloud gaming could be a viable alternative, which makes this unlikable announcement all the more badly-timed. Well, for regular people. For Nvidia, the company gets to provide less and stands to make more, considering users having to pay for extra time. I'm so mad about this and, like I said above, I barely even know what GeForce Now is! If you actually use this service, let me know how you feel about it.
