Google Stadia shutting down

[viper37]

Seems like studio developpers were kept in the dark as much as gamers.
Stadia developers still working on games shocked to hear of shutdown


Doesn't like streaming games as a service has much of a future.  Nor is crypto-gaming.  Game developpers will have to go back at making great games that stimulate the interests of buyers to sell them.  And allow mods to extend the living of their games like CD Projeckt.  And release expansions/DLCs, or like Bethesda does with Skyrim, upgraded versions of their games after a few years.  Just about the opposite of EA.

[Grey Fox]

Microsoft's cloud is having great success.

Google's model was dumb from the start. It needed to be make deals with publishers and have a launch catalog of a 100 games included with the purchase of hardware.

[FunkMonk]

Yeah, Microsoft's Game Pass and its streaming service is quite good and successful. It's really cool to play Xbox games on my laptop.

Nvidia's GeforceNow is also doing well and works great. It uses your existing library of games from Steam, Epic, Ubi, GOG, etc, so you don't have Stadia's problem of buying a Stadia version of a game that you already own.

[Solmyr]

What's the advantage of using GeforceNow instead of just playing the game from your library?

[bogh]

I use it on my Macbook - lets me play PC titles without rebooting into bootcamp and gives me much better performance for anything else. I can also play my games on work laptop when away on business, just using the browser and not installing anything (company no-no obviously). These days I only really play locally if the game isn't available via GFN.

[FunkMonk]

Yeah, you can play games like Cyberpunk 2077 or whatever on a machine that doesn't even have a graphics card. It's really handy. I never actually sit at my desktop computer to play games anymore.

[Jacob]

So what's the deal with GFN?

[FunkMonk]

So what's the deal with GFN?

It lets you play games you actually own on various services via a stream to a PC with something approximating an RTX 2060/80 or 3060/80 graphics card.

Not all publishers allow their games to be streamed over GFN. Hence you can play Destiny 2, Apex Legends, or Control, but not Doom Eternal or Red Dead Redemption 2. But the list of games is growing, and I've found most smaller publishers allow GFN to stream their games.

I use it a lot for Path of Exile and of course Paradox games.

[Jacob]

It lets you play games you actually own on various services via a stream to a PC with something approximating an RTX 2060/80 or 3060/80 graphics card.

Not all publishers allow their games to be streamed over GFN. Hence you can play Destiny 2, Apex Legends, or Control, but not Doom Eternal or Red Dead Redemption 2. But the list of games is growing, and I've found most smaller publishers allow GFN to stream their games.

I use it a lot for Path of Exile and of course Paradox games.

Oh that's kind of cool...

It's kind of saying "you don't need a gaming PC to be a PC gamer anymore" which is kind of neat. I'm guessing it doesn't work well with modded games though (hello Skyrim)? Does it work okay with mods in Steam Workshop at least?

[Solmyr]

According to this, no: https://www.reddit.com/r/GeForceNOW/comments/sz9ao3/mods/

[bogh]

I've played a lot of pretty heavily modded Age of Wonders III multiplayer using GFN with no issues at all. I was expecting it to not work, but it works perfectly.

[FunkMonk]

Mods are hit and miss with GFN. I've found they work with Paradox games, though! I've played Stellaris, EU4, and CK3 with mods from Steam Workshop over GFN.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Oh dang, I'd never heard of GFN but that looks perfect for me. The free tier lets me play CK2 and EUIV for an hour without my laptop sounding like a 747 preparing for takeoff.

[The Minsky Moment]

GFN is great except the supported games list is quite limited and probably will always remain so because of publisher reticence to cooperate with an NVIDIA controlled platform.  In an ideal world the big publishers would get together and back a common streaming platform, but that probably won't happen soon if at all - MSFT already has their own strong platform, Sony seems to want to go their own way, etc.  It's too bad because such a service would do very well, a spotify of gaming.

Shadow works very well and has no game restrictions since it provides a full virtual PC instead of a game streaming platform.  It is even supported on the Apple Store and thus through Apple TV 4k,  But it is a lot more expensive then GFN and thus will probably always remain niche.

[mongers]

Oh dang, I'd never heard of GFN but that looks perfect for me. The free tier lets me play CK2 and EUIV for an hour without my laptop sounding like a 747 preparing for takeoff.

Indeed, this thread got very interesting and as Jacob also commented perhaps one doesn't need a gaming rig so much?