Nvidia's GeForce Now is losing all Activision Blizzard games, a bad sign for cloud gaming

[Chazore]

Wyrdness said:

This reminds me of the whole PC market debacle in the early 00s which lead to the EA/Valve rivalry where EA wrote off the PC market only for Valve to take their gamble with HL2 to push Steam and become the de facto platform for all PC games to be sold on a position that had EA envious to the point they pulled their games from Steam to create and push Origins in an attempt to cut out the middle man only for a double humiliation where courts ruled that Steam users who had already purchased their games should retain access to them and EA to eventually come back to Steam with their tail between their legs.

Exactly. EA didn't want to have to also sell, they wanted to become the de facto market leader, and we still see this from others to this day. Look at EG for example. They don't want to compete, so they sign exclusivity deals, so rather than seeing if their store pans out on it's own, they'd rather take a stranglehold via deals. Imagine once everyone lowers their cut, after EG has had it for a few, only for them to raise their own and watch everyone suffer. it'd be one killer of a strategy, but an underhanded one (even they know it's not something they can do indefinitely). 

I imagine Ubisoft will come back in time. Look at CDP reaching Ubi's level, and they pump out less titles, have far less staff and they run a much smaller storefront (smaller as in traction and earnings), yet GoG is gaining something that Uplay isn't, and CDP is also offering a new alternative via their all in one Galaxy 2.0, allowing us to play all clients by using their optional one.

The idea that the middle-man shouldn't exist is definitely going to be a far harsher lesson for the big fish to learn, once the waters clear and everyone has chosen a side. There should always be a middle-man for something, as we cannot entirely just cut them all out and keep them barred forever.