Nvidia won’t make you sign into Steam or Epic to try its free new cloud gaming demos

Image: Nvidia

Cloud gaming isn't for everyone, but it's getting easier to tell if it's for you because of the free virtual gaming PCs offered by Nvidia and Google. Following the recent announcement that any Stadia developer will be able to offer an instantly accessible free trial of their game without needing to log into a Google account, Nvidia's GeForce Now is now pushing reduced-friction demos as well.

If you want to play one of the demos on GeForce Now, you have to log in to your account with an account from either of the aforementioned companies. demos will automatically appear in a new row, and you won't need the second login.

You will only be able to launch them from within the app or play.geforcenow.com web app, there is no ability to click an ad. It's interesting to hear that Nvidia is welcoming demos from developers that don't have a full game yet.

Any free demo will be accepted. If a full version of the game becomes available later that our users can play it on GeForce Now, we just ask that, reads one of the answers I requested from Phil Eisler, VP and GM of the cloud gaming platform.

Since the GFN server are just Windows gaming PCs in the cloud, it makes sense that developers and publishers can submit any existing PC demo as-is. They don't need to port to Linux like with Stadia.

Unlike Stadia, the demos don't save your progress in the game, so if you choose to buy afterwards, you won't be able to pick up where you left off. They don't prompt you to buy or subscribe to GFN afterwards, which some might find nice. The company might consider ways to transition from a demo to a full game in the future.

When you play for free, neither platform lets you see what they're like at their best. If you don't have a Priority or RTX 3080-tier membership, these demos will launch with the company's free tier of remote computers, where you will be getting less impressive response times and might have to share the power of even a last-minute upgrade.

The newer tier of cloud gaming, called the RTX 3080, is the most impressive yet, but you have to pay a minimum of $20 to try it.

You'll find a lot more to try for free if you try GeForce Now. You can try any game you own on PC for an hour at a time for free, and it has a solid selection of totally free-to-play games.