GeForce Now is great for simulation games like Factorio or Civilization. Unfortunately 2K Games decided to arbitrarily restrict users of GeForce Now from playing Civilization VI, even with a licensed copy from the Steam store. In the beginning, it worked great. I could play on a giant map with 13 AI civilizations who completed their turns in a few seconds. And my laptop didn’t sound like an airplane.
I’m still bitter at 2K about this. If they offered an alternative cloud gaming subscription then I would purchase it to play Civ on a cloud machine. But they just decided to interfere in my choice of which hardware I use to run their software, while offering no alternative.
Super disappointing. I do still pay for GeForce Now though, because it’s a low price and because I have anxiety about what would happen to my save files if I stopped paying.
I agree 100%. However note your save games should be safe on steam cloud. Nothing gets stored on geforce now - your virtual instance gets destroyed once you log off. Should be easy to verify via your laptop even if you don't load up the save.
Will also add that City Skylines has been running pretty well on GeforceNow for what its worth. Of course that's relative to my Windows laptop with integrated graphics!
That’s true, but this is an easy cognitive dissonance for me to resolve, since I can think of it like paying to recover the handful of weeks I would have lost playing Civ over the past two years :)
Besides, I’m mad at 2K, not Nvidia. And I already bought the license for Civ, so it’s not like I can withhold money from 2K (I’d even pay for another license if it was an option to run it on the cloud - just let me do it).
GeForce Now itself is outstanding, and the technical quality of its product is exceptional. I suppose I could be mad at them for respecting questionably legal opt-out requests from publishers, but I understand their strategic reasons for cooperating with those.
And I suppose I’m only assuming 2K is the party at fault. I wish 2K would share its side of the story - maybe Nvidia tried a shakedown and asked 2K to pay for inclusion in its catalog? I doubt it though – the nature of GeForce Now means it supports any game by default, and requires effort to prohibit one. Given the obscure titles available in the GeForce Now library, I assume inclusion is opt-out by default, and 2K made their choice for whatever misinformed reason.
I’m still bitter at 2K about this. If they offered an alternative cloud gaming subscription then I would purchase it to play Civ on a cloud machine. But they just decided to interfere in my choice of which hardware I use to run their software, while offering no alternative.
Super disappointing. I do still pay for GeForce Now though, because it’s a low price and because I have anxiety about what would happen to my save files if I stopped paying.