We are big fans of Cloud Gaming here at Cloud Dosage. But, we also like to expose some of the rough edges in the experience that gamers face when using this cutting edge technology. One of those rough edges is the fact that you aren’t always in complete control of your ability to access your game library.
This lack of control comes in a few different forms when it comes to cloud gaming. It could be games are removed from a cloud service altogether. This happens all the time to games from the Amazon Luna+ catalog and games from Xbox Game Pass. In the latter case, you can at least still purchase the game to play locally on an Xbox console or PC. However, even cloud services that let you play games you own from PC games stores aren’t immune to game departures. 21 games departed from GFN in 2023 and Boosteroid has in the past pulled games from its library to save storage space.
Games “Offline” in GeForce NOW and Similar Services
GeForce NOW (and other services like it including Boosteroid) often place games in an “offline for maintenance” state. Games in this state are not gone from the service, but are temporarily unavailable. This arises because, as cloud gaming services (and not bonafide gaming platforms), these services rely on game state in third party platforms like Steam or the Epic Game Store – which can change from time to time. When a game is in “maintenance,” GeForce NOW shows the following message on its game page.
This game is offline for maintenance. We’re working to make it available as soon as possible.
This maintenance state is often times just a short window of time that is required to update the copy of the game on the cloud servers. For example, when a game on Steam gets an update, it needs to be updated on the NVIDIA cloud servers. Other times, an update to the game on an underlying store like Steam, Epic or Xbox for PC might break the game’s ability to work on GFN altogether. Certain anti-cheat mechanisms and IP address based restrictions have caused these types of issues in the past.
List of Games on GeForce NOW that are Currently “Offline”
We have a script that checks the current status of games on GeForce NOW on a regular basis. We found the following 13 games that have been in a maintenance state for an extended period of time and (as of the time of writing) remain under maintenance.
- Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation
- Automation – The Car Company Tycoon Game
- Black Squad
- Caliber
- Hitman: Absolution
- Just Cause 2
- Rogue Company
- Saints Row: The Third (Remastered Version is Still Live)
- The Settlers 7: History Edition
- Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction
- Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Prophecy
- Necesse
Keep in mind that these 13 games represent less than 1% of the GFN catalog. So, this isn’t exactly a wide ranging issue. But, it is something that gamers who purchased the titles above specifically to play on GFN could be justifiably a little cranky about. And, it’s something we’ll continue to monitor here at Cloud Dosage.
As we mentioned above, cloud games going offline for maintenance is not a uniquely GeForce NOW phenomenon. We’ll be tracking games that go offline on other services that rely on third party PC platforms in the near future as we expand our script capabilities.
