NVIDIA Just Screwed ‘GeForce NOW’ Gamers

NVIDIA’s popular GeForce Now cloud gaming service just emailed all their members with an “Important Update”.

Which, as expected, is a BAD thing… why does “Important Update” always equal bad news nowadays?!

In this videoI discuss exactly what GeForce Now changes are being introduced in January 2025, and why it sucks.

If you prefer text over video, please read on for the guide/transcript version of this video.

Video Transcript And Guide

Hey everyone, so this word that I can’t say for the first 15 seconds of a YouTube video has unfortunately been pushed on the popular GeForce Now cloud gaming platform by Nvidia, its owners, and it completely sucks because basically last night, Nvidia orGeForce Nowemailed all of their members saying that there’s now a monthly cap, which basically means you can only play the game for around 3 or 4 hours a day on average, even if you have a pay plan, even if you got the performance or the ultimate tier, and that completely sucks.

I think this might be the beginning of the end for this very popular gaming service, or at least it’s not going to be as popular going forward, because who, when they play a computer game to relax at night after work or whatever, who actually wants to worry about a monthly limit? Who wants to think,“Oh, am I playing too much? Am I going to have enough hours at the end of the month to actually play this really good game that I’ve been looking forward to that’s going to be released on the 27th of the month? Will I still have any hours left for that game?”

So in this video, I wanted to talk through what these changes are, whether these changes will apply to you, and if they do, what you can actually do about it.

What’s Changing On GeForce Now

So let’s back up a bit. Last night, on the 7th of November,GeForce Now emailed everyonewith an “important update” about their membership, and you know with an email like that, it’s either going to be they’re going to increase the price or they’re going to apply this to your membership in some way, and unfortunately, that’s exactly what they’ve done, because they announced a new 100-hour-a-month cap for gaming, even on the performance and the ultimate tiers. There’s no escaping it, unfortunately, unless you’re a Founders member, and I’ll talk about that in just a minute.

But basically, even if you’ve paid for performance or ultimate, you’re going to be subjected to this 100-hour-a-month cap. The only exception is if you’ve played for less than 85 hours in one month, you can carry over 15 hours to the following month. So if you did 85 hours in one month, you’ve then got 115 hours in the following month, which is then almost 4 hours a day, which sounds like a lot, but actually it’s not that much, especially if you’ve been gaming 2 or 3 hours a day, and then you’ve got some game you’ve really looked forward to coming out at the end of the month, maybe got a week off work or whatever or week of school, and you were going to play that game loads. You now won’t be able to, even with those carried over hours, because of this cap.

Will This Affect You?

And that brings me on to the second question: Will this change actually apply to you? So, in general, this set of changes is coming on the 1st of January 2025. If you don’t currently have a paid membership, so in other words, if you’re on the free tier, then it will come in in less than two months, because it’s the 8th of November right now. The only thing you can do, though, is if you sign up for a performance or an ultimate membership. What they said is then you get a grace period of one year before these changes are sunset, essentially, so you then won’t get hit by this set of changes until the 1st of January 2026.

And as I mentioned earlier, the only people who are exempt from this is Founders members. They said theFounders members aren’t going to be hit by this at all, right now. So if you’ve got a Founders membership from all those years ago, which you can’t get anymore by the way if you’re a new member, hold on to that membership for dear life, because otherwise you will get hit by this cap.

Alternatives

So that then brings us on to the next question: If you’re going to be hit by this, what can you do about it? Well, there’s four main options open to you really. The first one is simply go to a console or something like that, and obviously PC gaming and consoles aren’t mutually exclusive. The next option is to look at alternative cloud gaming platforms, and there are quite a few out there, but to be honest, in my experience, none of them are quite as good as GeForce Now is or was, and certainly if you had the ultimate membership in GeForce Now, I think that was one of the better memberships out there for cloud gaming. Maybe something like Xbox Cloud will get a bit better, maybe Microsoft will finally take it out to Beta and start pushing it properly now that Nvidia seem intent on killing GeForce Now, I don’t know.

So the third alternative is to build or buy a new computer, and then you don’t have to worry about cloud gaming because all of your gaming will be done natively on your own computer, streaming straight to your monitors. You don’t even need an internet connection, unless you buy like a Ubisoft game with DRM or something like that. But in general, that is a good option, other than the cost, because obviously with a computer, it might be, you know, really it’s going to be at least $500 or $600 for a new computer at a minimum for a 1080p gaming system. You then got the monitor, the desk, the gaming chair, keyboard, mouse, maybe headset, all of that, and it can get expensive quite quickly.

The fourth option, though, is just do nothing and carry on with GeForce Now, because while 100 hours isn’t that much for some people, some people do actually do less than that, and right now, I probably only game for like 50 hours a month or something, which doesn’t sound as much when I say that. But basically, for me, I could stay with GeForce Now if I wanted, or if I had just the free tier, I could say,“Right, I’m going to take out a performance or ultimate paid membership now, so that these changes don’t affect me until the 1st of January 2026,”and then that allows me to save up for a console or gaming computer or something, and cancel my membership at the end of next year instead.

So that’s really the only options, and that wraps up this short video. I basically wanted to get it out there because a few months ago,I done a review of GeForce Nowwhere I sung its praises and I said how good it was, and obviously this change kind of nerfs the platform quite a lot, which sucks. But I hope you found this video useful, and if you did, please click the thumbs up button, and please subscribe to see more videos like this. Thanks for watching.

Tristan has been interested in computer hardware and software since he was 10 years old. He has built loads of computers over the years, along with installing, modifying and writing software (he’s a backend software developer ‘by trade’).Tristan also has an academic background in technology (in Math and Computer Science), so he enjoys drilling into the deeper aspects of technology.Tristan is also an avid PC gamer, with FFX and Rocket League being his favorite games.