Thursday, February 2nd 2017
NVIDIA Makes it Tougher to Trade Bundled Games
NVIDIA and AMD have, over the past five years, innovated giving away AAA game releases with their graphics cards, through game codes that can be redeemed on DRM platforms such as Steam. The two have their own internal pricing with game publishers, which makes giving away $60 (retail value) games with $400 graphics cards tolerable to their bean counters. To consumers, these games made for great tradable commodities, a sort of "discount coupons," even. Say you don't want to play the included games, already have them, or bought two graphics cards and have one game to spare; you had the ability to give away, trade, or even sell those game codes. NVIDIA is about to change that.
With its latest game bundle that lets you choose from "For Honor" and Tom Clancy's "Ghost Recon: Wildlands," on purchase of new GeForce GTX 1070 or GTX 1080 graphics cards, NVIDIA changed the game redemption method. You first need NVIDIA's GeForce Experience app installed and logged in. The app then one-time redeems the game of your choice on verifying that you have the graphics card participating in the offer (i.e. a GTX 1070 or GTX 1080). The app doesn't appear to be checking serial-numbers of the cards, but rather if the right GPU is installed in the machine. After redeeming the game, however, you are free to uninstall GeForce Experience, or even change your graphics card. The game is handled by the DRM platform its developers intended (Steam, UPlay, Origin, etc.). We tested how game code trading works under the new system.
One of our US-based friends gave us a coupon to Tom Clancy's "Ghost Recon: Wildlands" beta, which we redeemed using GeForce Experience. In order to use the key, we first had to install GeForce Experience. When we tried to redeem the key with the app, it sprung up a "region mismatch" error. We then had to use a VPN to trick the activation service into thinking we're trying to redeem from the US. It then wanted to link our UPlay account to GeForce Experience, so we had to create a new UPlay account, too. From our experience, we conclude that bundled game key trading has certainly become many notches tougher though not impossible.
With its latest game bundle that lets you choose from "For Honor" and Tom Clancy's "Ghost Recon: Wildlands," on purchase of new GeForce GTX 1070 or GTX 1080 graphics cards, NVIDIA changed the game redemption method. You first need NVIDIA's GeForce Experience app installed and logged in. The app then one-time redeems the game of your choice on verifying that you have the graphics card participating in the offer (i.e. a GTX 1070 or GTX 1080). The app doesn't appear to be checking serial-numbers of the cards, but rather if the right GPU is installed in the machine. After redeeming the game, however, you are free to uninstall GeForce Experience, or even change your graphics card. The game is handled by the DRM platform its developers intended (Steam, UPlay, Origin, etc.). We tested how game code trading works under the new system.
One of our US-based friends gave us a coupon to Tom Clancy's "Ghost Recon: Wildlands" beta, which we redeemed using GeForce Experience. In order to use the key, we first had to install GeForce Experience. When we tried to redeem the key with the app, it sprung up a "region mismatch" error. We then had to use a VPN to trick the activation service into thinking we're trying to redeem from the US. It then wanted to link our UPlay account to GeForce Experience, so we had to create a new UPlay account, too. From our experience, we conclude that bundled game key trading has certainly become many notches tougher though not impossible.
35 Comments on NVIDIA Makes it Tougher to Trade Bundled Games
The only difference is that before the buyer could redeem the Steam/Origin/Uplay directly from Nvidia, now you have to do it for him.
While RAPTR by itself only caused crashes sometimes when the video recording overlay was activated, in the case of GeForce Experience (which btw uses subliminals) there are so many issues you will not be able to keep it installed and active as a gamer that uses too many games. There are different levels and type of incompatibilities, some which have no fix whatsoever.
I've intensively tested this on an Acer Predator with GTX1070 and the verdict is quite clear: uninstall.
Maybe it will be improved in the future, but I won't use an app that causes excessive game crashes no matter the enforcement methods.
Easy to see things from their point of view. It's like offering a gift card rebate. Most people aren't going to use it, either because they forget about it, lose it, or don't see anything they want to buy, and the thing expires, returning that money to the seller. I've gotten lots of free games with video card purchases, but that's never factored into my decision to go with a certain product. I always know what I'm after ahead of time, and I'll take whichever is priced lower between my three or four preferred manufacturers. The only time the free game would sway my buying decision is if I'm planning to buy the game anyway, and the lowest price for a graphics card and that game cost more than the bundle. Otherwise, for me anyway, the game code gets thrown in a drawer and is never redeemed. And that's better for everyone's bottom line, except mine, but like I said, the free game almost never affects my buying decision. That being said, I'm far from a typical GPU buyer, since I buy almost zero PC games anyway (that's what consoles are for!), and I don't really know what the market looks like for reselling free game codes. Like has been mentioned already, it's either pressure from the game publishers, or some desperate product manager trying to push their app.
I wonder how strict they'll be on having a specific nvidia card.
Sure, it's a lousy move to make, but it's not surprising in the least.
Your testing is totally borked. There may be alot of people that dont like having to have GeFE installed, but it is not because of instability. I have used it for years because of Shadow Play, and not had one game crash due to it. You've obviously got other issues going on in your unstable system,