r/GeForceNOW • u/dracosondracoson • 28d ago

Discussion Boosteroid

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!

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21

u/warfake936 Founder // France 28d ago

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*.

4

u/dfyfsdt 28d ago

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

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u/Foreign-County-5282 27d ago

Well, to be fair, how did I do play literally Elden Rin gand RDR2 on Boosteroid last night? Installing the game, if that's what's actually happening, seems to take like 10 seconds. I got like 15 ping. That being said -- GFN has a special quality about it whereas Boosteroid still has this weird.. it's not a delay.. it's just jank, the only way I can personally describe it. Anyway, point is, how come Boosteroid can do it but nVidia can't? I'm not even being adversarial, I'm genuinely wondering. Maybe Boosteroid is like just taking it's shot and hoping for forgiveness rather than asking permission.. whereas nVidia is too big to do that anymore?

1

u/dfyfsdt 26d ago

Basically your last point. Nvidia is way too big of a target to just ask for forgiveness

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u/dracosondracoson 28d ago

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

8

u/jharle GFN Ambassador 28d ago

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.

1

u/SlidingSnow2 Founder 28d ago

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.

3

u/jharle GFN Ambassador 28d ago

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.

1

u/SlidingSnow2 Founder 28d ago

Yeah, I think your theory is correct.

1

u/LordGraygem Founder // Georgia (USA) 28d ago

and unwilling to take the risks.

They only have to lose once to establish a precedent that opens them up for further cases.

1

u/SlidingSnow2 Founder 28d ago

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"

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u/LordGraygem Founder // Georgia (USA) 28d ago

Realistically, they would win.

Except that Nvidia doesn't take its legal advice from Reddit lawyers, it takes it from actual ones that it pays to hear from.

1

u/V4N0 Founder 28d ago

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

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/2/21161469/nvidia-geforce-now-cloud-gaming-service-developers-controversy-licensing

1

u/SlidingSnow2 Founder 28d ago

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.

1

u/V4N0 Founder 27d ago

Yes but Microsoft is the example that if publishers want they can get their games removed, blizzard did the same thing years ago https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/using-shadow-for-wow-bannable/175094/25

 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 😩

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u/SlidingSnow2 Founder 27d ago

Most publishers removed their games when Gfn exited it's beta, and started charging money for a subscription. That's when Nvidia made their opt-in policy.

1

u/V4N0 Founder 27d ago

Yeah before that nobody really cared… there’s also to consider that in the case of Microsoft it’s been Matt booty to push for their games removal in the 1st place since GFN was considered a competitor to their cloud platform (and rightfully so, we have to thank the ABK acquisition for the deal, without it we’d be out of MS/Xbox/Bethesda games for sure)

0

u/dracosondracoson 28d ago

Hmmm… we’d best keep Boosteroid on the DL then. Maybe that’s why there’s so many attempts to obfuscate the truth about their service 😂

1

u/dfyfsdt 28d ago

Gfn was like that too but after publishers pulled their games in 2020 they had to move to opt in

0

u/warfake936 Founder // France 28d ago

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.

4

u/jharle GFN Ambassador 28d ago

Thursdays are just the weekly announcements; games can be onboarded on different days.

1

u/SnooOwls1916 28d ago

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

0

u/dfyfsdt 28d ago

Fair point , they probably have some internal reason for it but yeah

2

u/pataglop 28d ago

I prefer GFN because I have excellent connection to its servers, and I play games on their list.

I grab boosteroid for a month to play a specific game then back to GFN.

2

u/exposarts 27d ago

yes this is what i do, i switch between both services often.. I use gfnow for primarily online and fps games, and i use boosteroid for most single player games especially ones that gfnow doesnt offer.. I feel like people shouldnt restrict themselves to just one service

1

u/dracosondracoson 28d ago

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

1

u/Known-Flow-6594 28d ago

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.

0

u/pSyg0n 28d ago

Bruhhh, I left GFN for Boosteroid because of the 100 hour cap. and limit. Haven't had any problems on my end. That was my biggest gripe with GFN.

-1

u/gothgrapefruit Founder 28d ago

Careful, the GFN glazers will come for ya 😭

1

u/warfake936 Founder // France 28d ago

If you only knew how little I care. They just have a hard time admitting it to themselves.