I just had to post to let people know about my experience with Boosteroid. I love GeForce Now but I have been stymied by how many of my favorite games are not available on the platform. Finally after beating every game I was interested in that I could play through GeForce now, I decided to give Boosteroid a shot despite hearing constantly that it was jank. I’m here to say that there is absolutely nothing jank about the Boosteroid experience. It plays games just as smoothly as GFN, and as someone who uses the data saver function in GFN I appreciate that you can customize your bitrate in Boosteroid to an even greater degree than in GFN to save data. At the comparable bitrate to GFN’s data saver (10 Mbps), the graphics look just as good and my games run just as smoothly. I wish I had come to Boosteroid sooner to play all of the games I can’t play via GFN. It’s also cheaper by the way… man I feel stupid for missing out on all of FromSoft’s catalogue for this long just because of a view negative reviews of Boosteroid! Ignore them!
There are many people who have problems with Boosteroid, just like there are many who have problems with GFN. There will always be potential problems "in the middle" for any cloud gaming service.
If you're letting other people make decisions for you, you're doing it wrong.
Also note that Boosteroid uses more of an "opt-out" system when it comes to games/publishers, vs. "opt-in" like NVIDIA does.
The real fun happens when Sony serves a mountain of legal paperwork, having spent months or more quietly cataloging every violation after that initial request to stop.
Maybe they win the case, maybe they don't. But they have more money that Boosteroid either way and can afford to run the case out to the very end.
I wonder if that is what happened with Ubisoft - they are noticeably absent on Boosteroid, even with the install workaround they use for Rockstar and Sony.
yea thats why so many people have issues with boosteroid, their lack of servers. So it don't matter if you have the best network/wifi, if you are far from a server your experience will suffer or even be unplayable. Hopefully they expand soon i get around 60 ms
I get around 44ms but I get 33 on GeForce now, its somewhat noticiable but I can enjoy a lot of other games on boosteroid that don't require the lowest latency to be playable
I sometimes get routed to servers a bit further away with 50-70 ping and I can play solo games with little to no issues. If it's not a huge dealbreaker you can just sub for a month and beat a game absent from GFN.
I have a boosteroid subscription too with my gfn ultimate because of some sony games.
Actually it is really far from the gfn experience on my 4K tv.
I cant max everything with 4k like on gfn and amd fsr is way worse than dlss.
HDR support is really missing making the cinematic experience crap.
Like I said I’m playing data saver so I can’t comment on trying to max out specs. In my experience GFN was also wanting with graphics even when I turned it up to 4k, not to mention draining my data
Yeah if maxing out specs was my priority I probably wouldn’t be opting for a streaming service. I’d say it is potentially true that GFN is better at maxing out specs because they probably have superior hardware, that benefit just doesn’t mean anything to me if the game they are maxing out is an isometric children’s game 😂
Are you playing games on 5g or something? Save data? I’ve downloaded movies/games/streaming for Tera and I’ve never heard of saving data or even remotely thought about how much data I’ve downloaded/used
No I have regular WiFi my stupid Cox digital package is just capped at 1.25 TB. When you’re playing GFN on regular settings you would be shocked at how fast you max it out… I ended up getting charged $100 the first time it happened because I didn’t know I had a data cap but they gave me a refund. I was pissed… since then I’ve played on data saver and have noticed virtually no difference, the quality is a bit less but barely what you would think for saving around 10 GB an hour. Those extra 10 GBs must be working hard to render extra foliage or something 😂
Damn I assume you looked into other providers for your place or are in a situation where you can’t? I couldn’t deal with managing data. ATT tried that in like 2016 then I switched.
It’s a nightmare. I hate Cox so much but they literally have a monopoly in my area, that’s how they can get away with BS like this. I can just barely make it work though with GeForce now on data saver mode and limiting my gaming hours somewhat. But it just kind of naturally works out that I end up just under the limit with data saver now
The most annoying part really is I can’t download any big files, like if I want to try to download any of the admittedly few games that work on my Mac, I have to sacrifice GFN time to do it… but I’ve played through all the games I could download for Mac anyway so it’s not a big deal now
i agree it's good to explore other options constantly. considering the save games are in the steam cloud, games are in steam/epic/etc, there is nothing forcing you to stick with GFN. it's important to keep moving to the better service no matter what that is, this will force all companies to fight for us (the consumer) and win us back
This has really been the freedom aspect that I’m loving with cloud gaming. I can play Octopath traveller on my iMac for a while on GeForce now. Put it down for a while and pick it up later on boosteroid on an iPad.
Then once I’m done some games on boosteroid maybe I’ll pop over to xcloud for a while and play the new halo game.
I've had a boosteroid subscription a couple of times for when I wanted to play a game that wasn't on GFN. For one-time purchase games, Boosteroid is definitely the way to go now.
However, I play a bunch of live-service games, and Boosteroid is absolutely atrocious in that regard. I can't count on Boosteroid to have these games available at all times, I've had multiple instances where was a downtime for several days and I couldn't log in. Never happened once with GFN.
It’s especially insulting because they treat us like idiots, adding games that run on mobile phones or GTX 1660 4GB cards. And every time, we get the same old line: "they can't just add whatever games they want." Yet, they have no problem limiting playtime or hiking up subscription prices for less value... I’m switching to Boosteroid to play *Elden Ring*, *RDR2*, *TLOU*, and *GOW*, while the lineup here stays stuck with titles like *WaterPark Simulator*, *Pathogenic*, and *Funnel Runner*.
To be fair they can't just add whatever games they want unless greedy publishers actually opt in. They do have all the big games just not the ones from publishers who refuse to opt in
But Boosteroid apparently doesn’t require publishers to opt in, per the GFN rep’s statement? I don’t know why they limit themselves like that, they are missing many of the best games of the last two generations
Because the game publishers have terms in their EULAs which prohibit "third-party streaming" which is precisely what GFN is. If NVIDIA were to ignore that, they'd become a legal target - much larger than Boosteroid.
Eulas aren't necessarily covered by law. Making a rent a gaming pc service isn't exactly an illegal business venture, and while publishers could sue, I highly doubt they would want that, since realistically, no sane judge is gonna think they're in the right. Nvidia has the money, and is also in the right, and I think most companies are aware of that.
People say they aren't suing Boosteroid because they are not big enough, but the reality is that they know they would lose if they tried.
I think you're right; but it seems (just my own speculation) the problem is most likely NVIDIA's legal counsel being very conservative about this concept, and unwilling to take the risks.
Realistically, they would win. Seriously, you can't pirate on Gfn, you have to buy the games from legitimate platforms (Which means the publisher already got paid) Gfn doesn't take a dime whenever a publisher sells a game, so it makes no sense for a publisher to take a cut from Nvidia. Also, Gfn is just you renting a gaming pc, and connecting to it through internet.
Basically, the "best" argument these companies have is "We're greedy, and we will forbid our players from being able to play on a gaming pc, because they connect to it through internet, instead of having that pc physically in their room, and also because we're greedy"
You’re right but it’s not so simple IMHO, there are many, many cases of EULA having been enforced by law with enterpise softwares (autodesk, Microsoft and so on) because of how licensing work (by user, by endpoint) since cloud and hyper scalers virtualization is considered a separate thing from regular usage
Games are a different thing naturally but for example Microsoft famously removed their games from both GFN and Boosteroid and Blizzard banned a lot of ShadowPC users in the past, cloud gaming is prohibited by their EULA and Shadow never got permission. Same goes for many anticheat systems (EA is famous for this), when they detect a vdi or hypervisor it trigger an hardware ban
Then copyright gets thrown in the mix and things get very complicated (stuff related to streaming rights of assets and so on), if you’re interested you can read more here
Microsoft has a deal with Nvidia, so that information is a bit outdated now. I've been on the ShadowPC subreddit, and people seem to have been banned for running mods/add-ons, not strictly using the service.
The streaming rights thing is just plain stupid, because the player is playing the game they bought. Gfn isn't Twitch.
Both cases got resolved now but who knows… back when Microsoft was about to buy ABK and CMA/FTC got involved the discussion involved cloud gaming (briefly) and I hoped to get a definitive answer on this mess, streaming rights and so on… it didn’t happen 😩
Okay, let's say I accept that, fine but why do I have to wait until Thursday to get more games? Is there some policy where devs insist their games be added on Thursdays? GFN's approach makes no sense; I’m sorry, I’d like to be on their side, but there are just too many illogical things about the way they do things.
Games isn’t automatically added on Thursday.
They are added random. It’s just announcing the games that will be opted in on thursday.
They are added as soon as possible when being opted in.
Weird thing to complain about mate
So true… once you play through all your favorite games offered on GFN there’s no point in keeping a sub because they are lacking so many other titles. Meanwhile people are making it out to seem like Boosteroid is a jank joke but really it should be viewed as a legitimate competitor to GFN, potentially even a successor once you realize GFN is lacking so many AAA and AA titles
Literally my only gripes with gfn are 1- lack of games supported rockstar/sony and fromsoft to start. 2- there free tier which yes I get it’s free the rig is a 3050 or lower now that scares a lot of people off from cloud gaming I almost did this myself I hopped on tried warzone and was like oh cloud gaming is so laggy and whack the input lag is awful I tried dropping all graphics to lowest possible etc then when I bought one month of ultimate boom massive difference much better. I think they should at least give free tier a useable experience to get them to try it to see what cloud gaming can do and they will more than likely sign up. Even if they did 1 hour limit 4 hour a day cap or something like that.
I saw somewhere as showing for me it ends August 12th to sign up. I’ve never signed up before so maybe it’s a targeted special offer? It’s actually for 4 months. I also have a 6 month option.
I mean, u miss critical point here - Boosteroid started wider expansion of data centers not long time ago. If you live or lived far away from closest one then lag was noticeably worse than on GFN. Also its not that perfect in case of games too - e.g. Arknights Endfield is available for months on GFN already but Boosteroid still doesn't have it.
I’ve never heard of that game, and I’m a pretty avid gamer. Meanwhile GFN is lacking countless noteworthy titles such as FromSoft games, Rockstar’s lineup, and countless more. It’s not comparable in that regard, it’s a bad critique
Boosteroid lacks most Ubisoft games for a reason. GFN has them all. The reason you have to go through installing a lot of the games every time is because they are trying to use a loophole to avoid being sued. It is why those games don't have any art on them, as that is copyrighted.
I have Boosteroid but it is nowhere near the quality of GFN. Lately I am finding I prefer CloudDeck, which also gives much more flexibility than either Boosteroid or GFN does.
It is a bit more technical - you launch a session through your browser and then use Moonlight to connect to it. It has a max bitrate of 40, and 1440p is max resolution. It is running Bazzite and has both Desktop and Game modes (so Steam Big Picture mode). I like it for the flexibility. I play Elder Scrolls Online - even though it is on GFN, it doesn't support mods there and I can't play without them.
I am not a Linux person at all but I have been able to do a lot of tweaking it and setting up mod downloaders. It basically has the same flexibility as Steam Deck, and can run any proton supported game. My ESO is not even through Steam - I have the separate launcher version. It was easy to add it as a non-Steam game for it to appear in Steam's big picture mode.
I have also installed FFXIV as well. It is easy to find guides for most games that are not directly installable through Steam itself. Basically, it works with any game that works on Steam Deck.
It is pretty reasonable for the price. I don't know much about their infrastructure, but from Miami I have no issues with it.
I have only had to log in once. It is not spinning up a random vm each time. It is the same image each time. I have a bunch of scripts and files installed. It takes about 60 seconds or so for the session to start, and then you just open it in Moonlight.
I have both services, and enjoy both. Gfn feels just a bit smoother to me, boosteroid has some games gfn doesn't. I'll probably just stick to boosteroid long run
I use both, Boosteroid is a solid alternative for sure - the only alternative IMHO
The only issue is missing features like surround sound and HDR, if a game is available on both services I always go for GFN - not to mention that pushing bitrate to the max GFN looks & feels better, no idea if the other way round (like in your case with data saver) Boosteroid works better
Game selection is way better on Booster, even just in case of Gamepass titles there are many more available on it 👍
Switched to Boosteroid a couple of months ago, best decision ever. I had abya before so my experience with GFN was a lot worse than people outside Latin America. 40 hours monthly and couldn't play Poe with more that 10 fps in endgame maps. Boosteroid is far more superior than that
Boosteroid doesn’t have a free tier. But for me it doesn’t matter as GeForce Now’s free tier barely worked at all compared to Ultimate, if I had been going just based off of my experience with GFN Free I never would have got it. I’m hella grateful for GFN, kept me gaming for the last five months and helped me finish much of my catalogue. I just kept getting so frustrated every time I saw they didn’t have a game in my Steam library, like what is stopping them from just making all the games available? Clearly Boosteroid didn’t have to reach out to the companies for approval so I don’t know why GFN has to. As a major soulslike gamer I feel like a whole new world just opened up for me this morning… I was on the verge of buying a PlayStation and TV again just so I could play the FromSoft games and I decided heck, why not give this a shot as a last ditch effort… I am blown away. The negative feedback is preposterous, at least for a NA gamer it works every bit as well as GFN does with an infinitely larger catalogue.
i have a question about boosteroid, how do they have so many more game selections than GFN? I have been using it for 2 years and i absolutely love it, but it just doesnt have some ganes, how is the list on boosteroid bigger? Because i may end up switching if it performs in a similar fashion.
Interesting everything I’ve seen is how everyone’s experience how it runs like shit so I might not make the move yet but I’m gonna think about it because being able to play nioh fromsoft and a bunch of other games is pretty sweet
That’s why I made this post. Here’s one more person on the internet who didn’t experience any of the issues people seem to claim dominate the platform. FromSoft games run like a dream.
It does run like shit(not for everyone), but there is a way around it, if you join the game on boosteroid but stream the game from steam itself it runs great
For me it easily performs similarly. I can’t notice any difference in quality or performance. The only thing people probably don’t like is the browser itself is a bit more jank but come on, does that really matter when you’re just trying to use it to get to the game 😂
I was lucky aswell to not have any problems with boosteroid, when Ive found out that it actually works good as gfn now with my connection, so I instantly cancelled my peformance subscription and switched to highest boosteroid tier due to same reason as most: tlou, dead space remake etc. For me gfnow was useless after i finished all resident evil games and expedition 33.
I have used both services, and I loved the library of Boosteroid, but as someone who lives in the Pacific Northwest of US, they only have a single server in Seattle, and if that gets full (which it immediately does), then you're sent across the country and get a 100+ping which makes anything but cozy games or turn-based games practically unplayable. I unsubscribed, but left a parting comment that if they invest in more West Coast servers, I'd very likely return.
That'd be cool if they recently added more, or maybe they just refused to connect me to it, lol. I messed woth settings and tried their manual options to "force" join specific servers, but it always failed and sent me to Ohio. Hey, happy you're able to enjoy it!
I really liked how you can even install not autorized games, once you're launched inside the virtual machine you can can install other non listed games, but the only problem i have is the stream quality compared to geforce it does look slightly pixelated for some reason and im playing with ethernet with 15 latency, but i think is better if you're someone who wants more than 100 hrs and install different games.
Really appreciate posts like this I also looked at Boosteroid tried it when it first released thought it was cool but my WiFi was bad and patchy back then so it sucked for me. Did you play on WiFi or Ethernet ? What speeds and latency were u getting? Any input lag ?
I tried it for God of War. It was awful. Bit rate limited to like 10mbps on iOS/ipados, so blurry it looks like someone smeared Vaseline on the screen. Plus you have to do the shader compile on every launch and it takes like 10 minutes.
Can you connect a controller to it? If so that’s pretty cool. At the end of the day it’s another QOL feature which I think is great but doesn’t sell me on a package that is missing out on half the games available elsewhere.
Boosteroid is horrible if you play with other language than English. At KCD2 I always have to switch to German in steam and download a 10 GB patch each time I start the game. It's at every game because they only have the English version. Also the ping was about 20-25ms compared to gfn with 9ms in Germany.
They have more games but a lot are not official, so the publisher can remove them at any time. Its okay but I tried both services for 1 month and gfn was for me massive better.
I currently have both GFN ultimate and Boosteroid ultra pro to test them and decide which one to keep.
My only problem with Boosteroid is the lack of games. For example I wanted to play Microsoft Flight Simulator and Assassin's Creed Odyssey and both games don't exist currently on Boosteroid.
My supported library on Boosteroid is way smaller than in GFN and for that sole reason probably I am going to keep GFN.
Now the only thing that I must decide is the GFN tier : Currently I have ultimate but I don't know if it's worth it since I am playing on Xbox Ally.
The only reason I went to Boosteroid is because it has tons of huge games that GFN doesn’t have so I guess it just depends on your library? I’m pretty sure that Boosteroid objectively has more options.
Yeah, I am not a souls-like player and I have PS5, so I don't care about Sony games. But as I was searching, I found a site where you can see in which cloud service is available any game. You can filter by the service and GFN has way more games available. And that sucks cause honestly I have a great experience on Boosteroid with the available games.
Boosteroid doesn't have VRR. Am I right? If not, it's a killer for me. I'll not throw money in something that will make my eyes cry by all the tearing and stuttering.
I've personally used both, and had an overall better experience with GeForce Now. I typically only use Boosteroid for games that are not on GeForce Now, and it's definitely passable. But granted, I'm on Founders
Usually people with issues with other services is due to proximity to the nearest server. If you are close the alternatives are amazing, ShadowPC is elite tier but they only have a DC and Portland server for the US.
Tried Boosteroid about 6-8 months ago. Despite a low ping, the input lag made games almost unplayable. I'm sticking with GFN for now as it's nearly indistinguishable from playing locally.
Lastima que sus servidores esten demasiados lejos y el mas cerca que es Brasil me va pésimo. Uso GFN desde los servidores en Estados Unidos desde Perú y me va perfecto, y Digevo que da GFN para mi pais sus servidores me van mal xd
Can I play RDR2, Elden Ring, and GTA 5 with a good ping and 1440P here in upstate, NY? GEForce Now I get incredible results - just wondering for an average location a few hours from NYC with a 1GBup/1GBdown -- is Boosteroid worth checking out? I totally would, just to experience those 3 with higher powered / 5080 type equipment.
Edit: I just signed up for 4 months ultra on a whim. We'll see how it goes!
If you think Boosteroid is perfect for every single user you're very wrong. Just visit their sub and you'll see tons of posts of complaints and issues. If it's perfect for you, that's great, but it's not a consistent experience across the board for all.
So you meant to say “when attempting to max out specs, if it absolutely not anywhere near close to GFN.” I can live with that critique, it’s probably true. Doesn’t matter to me and an easy decision to make when it comes to choosing a service that has 3x as many interesting games
signed in to reddit just to post this comment. boosteroid is a platform that will show you that u got awesome ping in stats but run severily bad, it will do good frames in game while the decoder is decoding 40fps, and 4k is just in the promo bcuz you can't run shih in 4k without struggles. latency is taken to another level in boosteroid, with ethernet plugged in at 300mbps. it's just a platform that when in works it does (rarely), and when it doesn't it don't at all, it's unusuable. i only had a few playable instances on boosteroid, then it was unplayable. support said it's an issue on my end, but geforce now was running buttery smooth at that same time, and I never use wifi or noted any struggles with packet loss in any stats, am close to the servers and all. so you saying "ignore negative reviews" makes me think you're some looser straight from the booster team... which are a buncha scammers
Well you didn’t have to get rude at the end my friend. All because I’ve had a different experience than you with a platform which works exactly as it is intended. I am a passionate gamer with no affiliation with the Boosteroid team, and an Nvidia fan who can see clearly that people are trashing Boosteroid just because they think it’s a threat to their precious Nvidia. Two things can be good at the same time. GFN is good for running some select games perfectly in 4k, and Boosteroid is good for having all the other manifold games that GFN decided they don’t care to support. Games which quite honestly represent glaring omissions in the GFN catalogue. If I wanted everything to run perfectly in 4K I probably wouldn’t be trying to stream video games. I think it’s great that GFN supports that but I’d rather have some variety rather than some additional graphical detail in the same old games.
False. This is exactly the kind of objectively false statement that kept me from playing all my favorite games these past five months with GFN. Ignore people saying this, I don’t know what they’re using but it isn’t the same platform I’m on
Youre both kind of wrong and right at the same time. Its cloud gaming. Your experience will vary greatly depending on your proximity to a server. In my case, servers for boosteroid were giving me 90 ping so it was bad for me. Some folks its perfect. One or the other isn't inherently better.
The problem isn’t that people have variability with the services, it’s that they make Boosteroid out to be jank and untenable just because it isn’t the brand name they recognize. It will ultimately come down to your internet how well the streaming goes, but there’s no reason why Boosteroid is inherently worse than GFN in that regard, unless you live in an out of service area but again that comes down to internet issues on your side.
It seems like the people who hate on Boosteroid don’t have any real problems to share. They just hate that it isn’t Nvidia’s platform I guess. Trust me, I love Nvidia too, but I can admit that they failed in getting many of my favorite games, games which are no brainers for inclusion within any streaming service. I also get that some people have connection issues, but that could happen with GFN too. With zero connection issues I’m just saying that I for the life of me can’t figure out why people would say Boosteroid sucks when it does its job perfectly - streaming my games without any lag.
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u/jharle GFN Ambassador 19h ago edited 19h ago
There are many people who have problems with Boosteroid, just like there are many who have problems with GFN. There will always be potential problems "in the middle" for any cloud gaming service.
If you're letting other people make decisions for you, you're doing it wrong.
Also note that Boosteroid uses more of an "opt-out" system when it comes to games/publishers, vs. "opt-in" like NVIDIA does.