In making yet another case for physical media ownership, technology giant Nvidia has announced that they will soon be introducing “a 100-hour monthly” playtime cap to their GeForce Now cloud gaming service.
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Properly launched in February 2020 following a five-year public beta test period, GeForce Now not only allows subscribers to remotely stream their personal Steam, Epic Games Store, Xbox, and Ubisoft Connect libraries to any number of their personal devices, including smart TVs, tablets, and other laptop or desktop computers, but also provides them with the ability to play the same save file regardless of location.
At current, the service is compatible with over 2,000 games, including such major titles as CDProjekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077, Game Science’s Black Myth Wukong, and SNK’s The King of Fighters XV.
When it launched, Nvidia initially offered access to GeForce Now via two separate tiers of paid membership: Free, which presented players with ads and also limited their play sessions to a single hour, and ‘Founders’, which held a slightly reduced $5 price-tag and provided players with unfettered access to the service’s full amenities.
In March 2021, these membership offerings would be slightly modified. While the ‘Free’ tier remained the same, the ‘Founder’s’ package was officially retired (with said subscribers being allowed to continue their membership at its reduced price) and replaced with a ‘Priority’ option, itself bearing a roughly $10 price-tag and capping play time at 6-hours.
Further, this restructuring would also introduce an aptly-named ‘Ultimate’ tier, its $20 monthly membership increasing the playtime limit to 8 hours and allowing players to utilize the company’s Reflex, G-Sync, and DLSS 3 technologies to improve the graphics quality of their streamed games.
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And on November 7th, 2024, Nvidia announced that they would be making another switch-up to their membership offerings.
Per an official blog post, though GeForce Now’s Free and Ultimate membership levels have remain unchanged in their offerings, the service’s ‘Priority’ tier would not only be renamed to ‘Performance’, but also give its subscribers access to a new max streaming resolution of 1440p.
Unfortunately, in addition to this upgrade, Nvidia also revealed that “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,” they further explained. “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.”
Thanks to their having bought in to the service early, those with ‘Founders’ level subscriptions will not be subject to this new 100-hour limitation.
In offering what feels more like a patronizing appeasement than an outright olive branch, though the implementation of the new play limit is fast-approaching, Nvidia is allowing any GeForce member whose account is active on Dec. 31, 2024 “the ability to continue with unlimited playtime for a full year until January 2026.”
“As long as a member’s account remains uninterrupted and in good standing,” the tech company explained, “they’ll continue to receive unlimited playtime for all of 2025.”
