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Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

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Some publishers may be abandoning GeForce Now, but Epic "is wholeheartedly supporting" the service

Epic boss Tim Sweeney insists "it's the most developer-friendly and publisher-friendly of the major streaming services".

2K may have recently joined Activision and Bethesda in removing its portfolio from GeForce Now, Nvidia's streaming service, but it seems the service's biggest game - Fortnite - isn't going anywhere just yet.

"Epic is wholeheartedly supporting NVIDIA's GeForce Now service with Fortnite and with Epic Games Store titles that choose to participate (including exclusives), and we'll be improving the integration over time," Epic Games' boss, Tim Sweeney, announced on Twitter. "It's the most developer-friendly and publisher-friendly of the major streaming services, with zero tax on game revenue. Game companies who want to move the game industry towards a healthier state for everyone should be supporting this kind of service!

"Cloud streaming services will also be key players in ending the iOS and Google Play payment monopolies and their 30 per cent taxes," Sweeney added. "Apple has decreed that these services aren't allowed to exist on iOS, and therefore aren't allowed to compete, which is megalomaniacal and won't stand.

"Just waiting till later this year when Google is lobbying against Apple for blocking Stadia from iOS, while Google blocks GeForce NOW, xCloud, and Fortnite from Google Play, and this whole rotten structure begins collapsing in on itself."

As Wes summarised a few weeks back, GeForce Now ties into your existing PC library across a range of online storefronts, allowing you to play your games on computers, smartphones and tablets. It offers two access tiers to the system: the free offering lets users access the cloud system for a session of up to one hour - good enough for a game of Fortnite.

Founders get to jump the queue for server availability and can also access hardware-accelerated ray tracing features in supported games - Digital Foundry has more here.

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