I have always lambasted companies for their use of ads when using services. Many times have I stated that you should be free to watch content on YouTube without having to suffer through ads. This is mainly because ads show up on creators’ content and they don’t see any money from it. I’m therefore making free content for YouTube and not for the audience. However, when it comes to Nvidia, I can kind of see why ads would be used. I know. It’s weird.
Nvidia announced this week that they will be bringing ads to their free tier of GeForce Now. Users will begin seeing the ads on March 5.
This news surprised me, but probably not for the reasons you’re thinking. This news surprised me because I found out there was a free tier to GeForce Now. Upon doing an investigation, it seems that it just gives you access to a computer that can play games for only an hour. It doesn’t guarantee 1080p nor 60 FPS.
If anything, I feel like it should at least give you 60 FPS, but I guess its based on the GPU its using. The reason I say that is that the free version of GeForce Now would be a great alternative to Steam Link only because it doesn’t require me to log into a computer.
All that being said, the ads won’t interfere with the quality of the game. But, with the aforementioned quality being sub 1080p60, did that really matter? If anything, adding ads to it made the free version that much worse. This could be Nvidia’s way of getting more people onto Priority which gets rid of ads, gives you RTX and will give you 1080p60 as much as possible.
Lastly, I’d like to address my reasoning for being okay with this. With Nvidia, you are renting a server to play a game over the cloud. You already own the game, you’re just borrowing a gaming rig to play it on. It’s like renting a console at Blockbuster. I feel that’s different than YouTube where some folks may be supporting creators directly or creators may not be seeing or want to generate ad revenue from audiences. Yet, the creators can’t say whether or not their videos should have ads. Technically, those creators could move to other platforms, and I think they should. But, in the meantime, YouTube shouldn’t be forcing ads on everyone. I believe it should be opt-in.
At least until server rentals because cheaper and easier for PeerTube instances.
Source: 9To5Google
