NVIDIA GeForce NOW welcomes Square Enix back to streaming service

NVIDIA had a very high-profile launch of its GeForce NOW game streaming service, but probably not in the way that it had hoped. Just days after it made the service available to the public, big-name publishers yanked out their games over alleged contractual misunderstandings. Since then, NVIDIA has been working quickly to compensate for those losses and the return of Square Enix's biggest hitters could be the start of GeForce NOW's PR recovery.

Of course, none of the companies involved would publicly say why but the fact that Activision, Bethesda, and 2K Games, among others, suddenly marched out of GeForce NOW the moment it became open to all was unexpected, especially for subscribers. Those publishers have been part of the streaming service's testing period but some sources claim their agreement ended there. So when NVIDIA flipped the switch, they immediately bailed.

Since then, GeForce has been adding new titles weekly to make up for their withdrawal and even got some big names like Epic Games on board. It also made joining GeForce NOW an opt-in process for publishers and developers to make it easier on their part, both technically and legally. This latter may be one of the changes that Square Enix has been waiting for now that it is bringing back over a dozen of its games to GeForce Now.

Its list of Game Ready titles now includes 14 games across Square Enix's most popular franchises, like Deus Ex, Just Cause, Life is Strange, and Tomb Raider. The latter is extra special because "Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition" can be played with RTX On, delivering ray-traced graphics to players even when their device isn't capable of rendering those on their own.

NVIDIA says these fourteen titles are just the beginning and more will be coming. Of course, that pretty much depends on when and which ones Square Enix will opt into the service. If NVIDIA manages to get back into the other game publishers' good graces, it will definitely have a huge advantage of Google Stadia's current inventory.