Miskatonic

Thrilled to see Don't Starve and Don't Starve Together back on GeForce Now. Thank you for reconsidering and making your games available on the service. I can once again play (and spend money on) DST with friends. I hope other Klei games come back to the service, like Oxygen Not Included, or maybe even new ones like Griftlands; but DST was the big one I wanted to see come back. It was a great way to have fun with friends I haven't been able to see in person.

I'm going to assume in general you meant "Nvidia" when you say "GeForce". The former is the company and the later is just one of their brands. As for the terms of service and other legal wording... That's all pretty standard. Take a look at Klei's for example: https://www.klei.com/games/dont-starve/terms-of-service It includes very similar sections and wording. Any company knows they need to post something similar to limit their liability. It's not "good" or "bad", it's just how business is done. Also, unless you're actually privilege to internal details about Nvidia's or Klei's business dealings it's just more baseless speculation. JoeW has previously posted Klei's interactions with Nvidia on this issue and anything else besides an official statement isn't going to clarify the situation. I will say that reaching out to devs does work, especially if you are respectful and courteous. Several games were added back because players notified developers. In some cases developers weren't aware there was demand to keep the game available and in other cases they weren't aware of the change to opt-in system meant the game would be removed.

Well, all Klei games have now been removed from GeForce Now as was detailed in Nvidia's post discussing the new opt-in approach. I was hoping there might have been a last minute opt-in to keep them available, or at least an announcement on Klei's current position now that Steam has launched its Cloud Play Beta. I'll keep checking now and again to see if there is an official response, but for now I'll have to take a break from DST and Oxygen and hope they return in the future.

This part of the last post in this thread by JoeW is what I was talking about.

I would think any PC developer would at least work with Nvidia in some capacity, just to ensure their games work on the company's video cards. But yes, the initial GeForce Now approach of "ask for forgiveness, rather then permission" really hasn't panned out for anyone involved. Even if some legal opinions questioned if Nvidia even needed agreements in place; provided a game's license didn't explicitly forbid cloud installs, of which very few did (Blizzard being a notable publisher that updated their TOS while GeForce Now was still in beta to explicitly forbid it). The grey area seems to be if the automated server setup Nvidia is using is in the clear to count as users installing a game they have purchased a license for onto a machine they "own". If you rented a physical PC from a local company and then install Steam and a game on it, that should be OK right? What if you access said PC remotely; still OK to play a game you bought on Steam or would you have to get the OK from the game's publisher? GeForce Now is similar in many ways, but the service is being offered by a major company and streamlines a lot of the setup and install required by the end user. In fact a similar service, Shadow, has none of the steamlined process, and just provides a remotely accessible Windows Box that's tuned for gaming. As far as I know they haven't had any challenges from publishers, mainly because they don't advertise specific games as working on the service. Anyways, all I'd really like is an official statement from JoeW or someone else at Klei as to wether they are even considering allowing their games to remain on GeForce Now or if they've already decided to have Nvidia remove them, which seems to be the current plan.

I don't want to endorse the previous poster's intense tone but would like to also voice my disappointment in the pending removal of all of Klei's games from Nvidia's GeForce Now service. If we take Nvidia at their word, their updated approach to making games available on GeForce Now no longer requires any monetary or promotional agreement, just that the developer/publisher gives approval to make the game available. If having to agree to such a deal was the sticking point that resulted in the previous discussed pending removal (the date of which came and went with the games staying up, so I thought maybe Klei had given their blessing) it seems like it should hopefully no longer be an issue. For those that hadn't heard of GeForce Now or are unfamiliar with how it works, it is not a separate store front like Discord had, but a kind of 'virtiual PC' rental service. It ties into your existing Steam library, and all game purchases are made via Steam, Nvidia gets no part of the sale. Instead you are paying Nvidia to access this virtual PC which runs Windows installed with Steam and the supported game. The game runs remotely on this virtual PC instance and the game's video and audio is steamed to a supported device, like a phone or tablet, with control input flowing in reverse. So you still have to buy the game on Steam, but then can access it anywhere via GeForce Now provided you have a relatively stable network connection. Through GeForce Now I finally had a chance to play Oxygen Not Included and DST, neither of which would run well (or at all with Oxygen) on my admittedly very dated PC. I'd even persuaded a few friends to purchase DST on Steam so we could play together. I'm hopeful Klei will reconsider and give their blessing for their Steam distributed games that are currently available via GeForce Now to remain on the service rather than be pulled. Thanks!