Nvidia’s GeForce Now is running on a limited basis right now and many of the options for the streaming service are not available at all, including the free tier.
German tech site ComputerBase noticed this problem, which is not only happening in Europe, but is apparently a global problem.
Checking from the UK corroborates this, with GeForce Now’s ‘Free’ plan (which includes a basic platform, an ad-supported service) marked as out of stock. (Of course, it is not sold not at all, but you understand what Nvidia means: it’s at full capacity).
The mid-tier ‘Performance’ plan is also sold out for the 1-month pass, but you can get it with the 6-month option. As for the ‘Ultimate’ subscription, it is still available across the board.
However, day passes (introduced a year ago) for both Performance and Ultimate are also sold out. (Note that this is all correct currently, as this article is being written, but that could change by the time you read this.)
Why is this happening? ComputerBase heard from Nvidia customer service that these plans are temporarily frozen due to high demand for GeForce Now, to prevent existing subscribers from suffering at the hands of overloaded servers and performance drops.
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In short, the supply of GeForce Now servers cannot meet the demand for much of the streaming service.
As for the obvious follow-up question: why are the servers having problems like this all of a sudden? – Nvidia has not responded to that question so far.
You won’t be surprised to know that there are several theories floating around online (aren’t there always?) about what’s going on with GeForce Now. One of them is that there could be a rush of free plan users due to the popularity of Marvel Rivals (an online’supervision with the superhero issue released last month).
It seems like a pretty fair point, and clearly there are issues with the number of players playing for free that are affecting the experience for paying subscribers in some way. This extends more widely even to those who pay, given the situation with day passes.
With that in mind, here’s another thought: could this have something to do with the disappointment around next-gen GPUs in general, which is hanging like a cloud over some PC gamers right now? I’m specifically referring to rumors that RTX 5090 and 5080 stocks will be very tight, which will surely cause concern for the RTX 5070 models as well. And also, the news that AMD has stated that the RX 9070 graphics cards will not be released until March 2025, much later than expected (although still within Team Red’s announced launch window of Q1 2025).
With those kinds of concerns dampening enthusiasm around next-gen graphics cards across the board, are gamers speculatively checking whether cloud gaming might work for them? Which could explain why the activity levels around free accounts and daily passes are causing pain for Nvidia in particular.
Is that conclusion exaggerated? Yes, maybe, but whatever the case, Nvidia will presumably be working behind the scenes to smooth things out and add capability. Or there is another possibility raised by Tom’s Hardware (who spotted the ComputerBase article). That is, some servers have gone offline for updates, so it is not a rush of players, but rather a temporary lack of hardware that is causing the imbalance between supply and demand. Although if this were the case, I really think Nvidia’s statement would have clarified it.
Another factor that comes into play here is the need to defend the experience for full-time subscribers on GeForce Now, considering that the 100-hour time limit has now been introduced (for new members, starting January 1, 2025 ), causing quite a lot of controversy and unhappiness for some (which any danger of choppy gameplay would be doubled).
We’re not short of speculation on this, but for now, the main point of interest is: how long will these streaming service shortcomings for GeForce Now last?
