Nvidia is making some pretty sweeping changes to GeForce Now this week, allowing the $9.99 paid membership tier to push beyond 1080p and stream at 1440p and Ultrawide resolutions, too. And, thankfully it's doing this without bumping up the membership prices.
Unfortunately—and apparently to pay for that upgrade—Nvidia has also announced a new 100-hour cap on its game streaming service, which the company says "allows GeForce NOW to continue to provide unparalleled quality and speed—as well as short to no queue times—for all paid members, without increasing membership fees."
For a company which is now listed as the most valuable company in the world, at well over $3 trillion, introducing a play time cap on its users does feel a little tight. But I guess you look after the pennies and the trillions of dollars look after themselves.
The free tier isn't going anywhere, however, so you can still play the odd hour on a basic 1080p rig just to get a feel of what GeForce Now is. And what GeForce Now is, is really, really good. I'm a big fan of Nvidia's game streaming service, and I personally played pretty much the entirety of my Baldur's Gate 3 campaign on GFN either going large on my home projector or via the convenience of streaming to a handheld PC.
Yes, I used the controller layout exclusively. Fight me.
As a service, Nvidia's packet synchronising features ensure that the streams are rarely anything other than indistinguishable from a local gaming experience. Obviously, that's network-dependent, and if you're running on a weak service your mileage may vary. But we've played on rubbish hotel and convention centre internet and still experienced impressive gaming performance.
The changes, from today, mark the replacement of the previous Priority tier with a newly titled Performance tier. This has been upgraded to feature the ability to stream at up to 1440p and 60 fps, though whether this means the RTX-enabled hardware available to the Performance tier has also been upgraded, I'm waiting to hear back from Nvidia.
You also now get access to the Ultrawide resolutions that were once the preserve of the Ultimate tier alone. Those users still have access to an RTX 4080-powered server slice and can stream at up to 4K at 120 fps and 1080p at 240 fps.
Nvidia is suggesting that the Ultimate tier is now being allowed (along with the Performance tier) to save their in-game graphics settings, but that's been a feature of GeForce Now for a long time. There's a toggle in the app's settings which allows you to choose whether to use the Nvidia recommended streaming settings for in-game graphics, or to save your own changes to graphics for the next time you boot up.
So, in effect, the Ultimate tier isn't really getting anything new except a play time cap, but at least it's not being hit with a price rise I guess. The Performance tier remains $9.99 per month while the Ultimate tier is $19.99 per month, and the six-month plans also remain the same price.
Nvidia is putting that price freeze down to the implementation of this new 100-hour monthly time limit. "Rather than increasing prices for everyone," Nvidia's FAQ says, "the implementation of a high monthly max playtime will keep pricing the same for the foreseeable future."
It claims that this cap will only affect around 6% of GeForce Now users, which means most gamers aren't ever going to notice. That equates to around three hours of gaming time each day, and I'm not surprised most GFN customers aren't hitting that. If you're that dedicated to PC gaming you're likely playing those games on a local rig. But I admit I might have gone over that limit with my own Baldur's Gate 3 times last year, but the analytics are down right now so I can't check.
You can always buy more hours if you do run dry in a month, and you will also be able to carry over up to 15 hours each month if you don't go up to the full limit. You'll be able to buy 15-hour packs of extra playtime for $3 | £3.
The obvious question, however, is that if only 6% of GFN users are playing for more than 100 hours they're surely not doing so by such an amount that it would be harming Nvidia financially. So why is it sticking this limit in at all if it won't affect 94% of users anyway?
I guess it's possible some of those 6% are somehow botting the system, keeping a stream open artificially for some reasons and dubious benefit.
For its part, Nvidia doesn't really give a particularly good explanation: "To maintain GeForce NOW's low to no queue times and a high-quality experience every session for premium memberships, we are providing members with a high monthly playtime max of 100 hours."
Given that GFN will happily kick you out pretty quickly after it notes that you haven't made an input and have gone idle, it feels like it already has a pretty robust method of ensuring capacity. GPU-filled servers are becoming more valuable outside of gaming and game streaming, however, so maybe Nvidia is streamlining its efforts and funnelling resources towards more profitable enterprises.
Or maybe this price cap is a way to encourage people to sign up right now. Because for anyone with a current paid membership subscription that 100-hour cap won't come into place until January 1, 2026, and their playtime will remain unlimited. So, if you sign up before the end of the year you have a 12-month grace period, while if you sign up after January 1, 2025, you're going to be stuck with the 100-hour limit.
