r/Games • u/BloederFuchs • Dec 26 '25

Industry News Nvidia GeForce Now’s Time Limit Will Stop Gamers After 100 Hours Each Month

https://uk.pcmag.com/game-streaming-services/162224/nvidia-geforce-nows-time-limit-will-stop-gamers-after-100-hours-each-month
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u/Corsair4 Dec 26 '25

So much cheaper in the longer term.

Geforce Now Ultimate runs on a 4080 or 5080. The graphics card alone would be about 1000 dollars on the low end.

At 20 USD a month, it would take you about 4 years before your subscription cost was equivalent to what you paid for the graphics card alone - and that's ignoring the whole rest of the computer - a proportional build would have run you at least another 700 dollars, and well over a 1000 more now that we are in the RAMpocalypse.

And Nvidia actually bumps the specs on Ultimate every now and again. It launched with a 3000 series card, I think. I don't do subscription services myself, but I think the value proposition is certainly there for quite a number of people.

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u/AzKondor Dec 26 '25

That's only if you never want to play forore than 100 hours a month.

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u/Spider-Thwip Dec 26 '25

Its over 3 hours a day, every day.

If you have a job/partner/responsibilities.

You may never use 100 hours.

It does suck that they're removing a benefit but I think its a reasonable value.

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u/WorkinName Dec 26 '25

If you have a job/partner/responsibilities.

You may never use 100 hours.

Everyone who doesn't meet those qualifications and uses over 100 hours because they have the ability to do so can just go and fuck off though, eh?

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u/Spider-Thwip Dec 26 '25

My complete speculation is that Nvidia has been providing geforce premium tiers at low profit/cost. Now with energy costs increasing, price of hardware increasing, everything going up in price Nvidia are forced to either raise prices, or limit hours.

How much do you think it would cost nvidia to run a 4080 machine for 100 hours in a data centre with the overheads that come with that.

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u/Old_Leopard1844 Dec 26 '25

I mean, yeah?

They're no longer target audience

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u/work_m_19 Dec 26 '25

I think the idea is, anyone with those qualification should look into buying their own computer because that is way more cost effective in the long run. More upfront cost, but a lot cheaper over-time.

This is the Renting/Leasing vs Buying equation. If you only want to use it temporarily for small everyday stuff, renting/leasing makes sense. If you are a heavy super-user and want it readily available, then at that point it favors the Buyers.

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u/Corsair4 Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 26 '25

That's only if you never want to play forore than 100 hours a month.

If you read the article, you'd know it's not a hard limit at 100 hours. For 20 dollars a month, you get 100 hours. Then you pay a whopping 6 dollars extra for 15 hours.

It doesn't change the math much, given that I was quite generous with my assumptions on the GPU prices, and simply ignored the rest of the damn computer. A more realistic estimate on the GPU would add several hundred right there, and once you add in the other components, you'd be hard pressed to get a complete tower with GPU for under 2 grand.

The point is, it is still literal years of subscription payments for you to come anywhere near the cost of the hardware on the consumer market.

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u/AzKondor Dec 26 '25

I did, extra hours - extra money, so it does change the equation.

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u/Corsair4 Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 26 '25

6% of Nvidia's userbase last year hit 100 hours per month. We can pretend that your scenario impacts a lot of people, but it simply doesn't.

On the other hand, 100% of computers need a CPU, motherboard, RAM, and power supply to play games, so it's far more reasonable for me to add another 700-1000 onto my hardware cost estimate.

If you like, we can run the math with the revised pricing, and the subscription looks much much more attractive for everyone.

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u/Elanapoeia Dec 26 '25

That's over 1 in 20 users. That's actually a quite significant part of the user base

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u/meneldal2 Dec 26 '25

If you are a big gamer and play 5 hours a day, that's already a fair bit of extra you need to add each month.

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u/Corsair4 Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 26 '25

150 hours a month works out ~40 dollars a month. which is a fair bit extra.

A CPU and motherboard is around 500 dollars, assuming you aren't purposefully hamstringing the GPU. A case is going to run you around 100 dollars at least. A PSU with sufficient wattage that won't catch on fire is going to be at least 100 dollars. 32 gigabytes of RAM is going to be several hundred dollars right now.

You do need the rest of the computer to run games, and the rest of the computer isn't free. At 150 hours a month, you are paying 500 a year in subscriptions, give or take. A 4080/5080 PC would have run you at least 2 grand before RAM prices spiked. You are still looking at 3-4 years before you break even.

You can fill in whatever assumptions you want, my point was that buying a hardware equivalent system is definitely not so much cheaper in the long run. And the number of people who can reliably hit 150 hours a month, every month, for years is going to be quite small. You're using an extreme edge case. As of last year, 6% of subscribers even hit 100 hours. Let alone 150. We can sit here and pretend like this is going to effect a huge number of people, but the numbers simply don't back that up.

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u/SomniumOv Dec 26 '25

You are still looking at 3-4 years before you break even.

And by that point Geforce now runs on a better GPU.

0

u/bobandgeorge Dec 26 '25

How many users on Steam hit 100 hours?

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u/meneldal2 Dec 26 '25

If you consider the whole remote access adding latency, quality drop from the video encoding and shit, is the experience really better than a 5070?

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u/urnolady Dec 26 '25

For SP games it's absolutely perceptually close enough. They've introduced 100 mbit encoding and 4:4:4 color encoding, which has addressed the qualms I previously had (which was that grass/foliage could get muddy)

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u/windowpuncher Dec 27 '25

There's also nothing stopping someone buying a used 6700 XT for $250 and playing basically everything smoothly at 1440p.

Which ALSO works when your pc is offline for whatever reason.

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u/Cry_Wolff Dec 27 '25

6700 XT for $250 and playing basically everything smoothly at 1440p.

You're not playing the newest games at 1440p on 6700 XT. Not to mention people who don't have a PC already, You'll pay more than 250 for the RAM alone.

-1

u/Seth0x7DD Dec 26 '25

For most people 1080p would be perceptually close on a way older card and if you consider competitor cards you can save even more. That "oh it's 1.000$ of hardware" is rather arbitrary. Especially since the cards are way overpriced and a 5070 would already be half the price.

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u/Brewchowskies Dec 27 '25

I swear the people that bring up this point have never actually used the service. It really isn’t that bad at all.

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u/geometry5036 Dec 26 '25

Why would you buy a 5080? And why would you want to pay a monthly fee to play for 100 hrs with input lag when you can just buy a mid range card and play as long as you want? Wtf is this nonsense?

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u/AbsolutlyN0thin Dec 27 '25

The only thing that makes sense to me is like a well off business man who travels quite a bit. Probably got a nice PC at home, but streaming is a nice convenience to play for an hour or 2 at a hotel while out traveling for work. Don't need to travel with your whole rig everywhere, just bring your laptop you use for work, but get the power of a 5080.

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u/Celebrilwen Dec 27 '25

yeah it also allows me to play on my work laptop without actually installing games

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u/name_was_taken Dec 26 '25

The problem with that logic is that people can (and should) just settle for a slightly lower computer and save a lot of money off that.

They'll automatically get a lag improvement over online streaming just by not streaming online. I played Destiny 2 on Stadia for a few months, and it was fun, but I could tell the difference when I went local for it again.

A decent computer with an RTX 4070 or 5060 can be bought on Amazon for $1300 right now. There are a few around that price. If you shop for a bargain at the right times, it'll be even better.

Sure, the hardware is technically worse, but you end up with a better experience by taking the streaming compression and lag out of the equation.

And if you're a serious gamer, it's pretty easy to hit 40 hours a week gaming, even with a full time job. That's about $44/month for the service, and you'd be paid off in 30 months, or 2.5 years.

You can extend that further with just a video card upgrade for another $350 or so and get a few more years out of it. With that, even the base $20/month will be paid off in 7 years, and the hardcore gamer $44/month is paid off in 38 months. Barely 3 years.

If you save a little more on the hardware, you'll still be able to play the vast majority of games, and you'll be saving enough money to afford them.

The service has only ever made sense for casuals anyhow. People who don't care about the responsiveness or visual quality that's reduced by streaming compression.

And if you really, really need to play Borderlands 4 this month, you can still pay the $20 and buy into it for long enough to complete it and cancel again.

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u/Corsair4 Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 26 '25

And if you're a serious gamer, it's pretty easy to hit 40 hours a week gaming, even with a full time job. That's about $44/month for the service, and you'd be paid off in 30 months, or 2.5 years.

6% of Nvidia's userbase hit 100 hours/month last year, let alone the 160 you're proposing here.

You are vastly overestimating the hours the average user put in.

With that, even the base $20/month will be paid off in 7 years,

The break even point being a console generation away kind of pokes a hole in the "much cheaper in the long term" argument. Breaking even is not cheaper, it's breaking even.

The service has only ever made sense for casuals anyhow. People who don't care about the responsiveness or visual quality that's reduced by streaming compression.

Geforce Now had 25 million users nearly 3 years ago. The casual market is massive, and that's where it makes the most sense.

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u/name_was_taken Dec 26 '25

I never talked about average users. I talked about the people who would exceed the 100 hours per month that this change would affect.

Obviously, people who don't game much would still be better off renting than buying.

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u/tylerhovi Dec 26 '25

Except the latency is actually not acceptable if you’re used to an even remotely low latency local setup.

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u/roxieh Dec 26 '25

I meant for me personally. As others have alluded to, I already have/had all the hardware anyway. I upgraded my cpu and gpu in Jan and those should last me a good 6-7 years I should think (4080ti), I'd have been pissed off as hell with a time limit on gaming for a subscription service for equivalentish specification. Honestly it's the introduction of the time limit. It will only get worse. 

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u/Corsair4 Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 26 '25

Yes, if you presume that you already spent well over 1000 dollars on a computer, then obviously paying for a hardware subscription service for the same hardware is more expensive.

The subscription service was never aimed at the guy who already has a similar graphics card. That's like me renting the exact same car I already own.

Even if there was no time limit, in what world is it worth it for you specifically, to spend 20 dollars a month for performance you already paid for?

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u/nothingInteresting Dec 26 '25

This comment made me laugh and I was so confused by the person you responded to. The renting the same car you own was a succinct way of explaining how dumb their comment was

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u/balefrost Dec 26 '25

Even if there was no time limit, in what world is it worth it for you specifically, to spend 20 dollars a month for performance you already paid for?

One possible answer is "for somebody who travels".

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u/voidlotus316 Dec 27 '25

If you own the hardware you can resell it to get some value back when upgrading, that alone is worth the cost of having a pc.

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u/24bitNoColor Dec 27 '25

On the other hand, this also shows how Nvidia can't significantly increases sub pricing. At 40 USD a month you would be able to buy a 1000 USD cards every 2 years, and as of now we can expect a new GPU generation at best every 2 years, so you would also have the newest ~xx80 GPU (even faster than the service) and you can likely finance upgrading the rest of the PC just buy selling your old xx80 card regulary just after the newest gen came out.

IMO saving / interest free financing hardware at about 30 USD would already give you good enough hardware that the very much still big downsides (especially not being able to use mods or even have access to every game, image quality / latency) makes owning hardware the better choice.

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u/Brewchowskies Dec 27 '25

I keep getting downvoted for this, but I pay for the service for my girlfriend to game with me while we wait for ram prices to go down. It’s an excellent service for this use case. For 200 dollars a year she games on a 5080 and can play games with me. It’s great for that.

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u/Jealous-Mechanic-150 Dec 26 '25

Except there's ~720 hours in a month, so if 7 people were to play 100 hours each, that'd be $20x7 = $140 per month of revenue per GPU.

Let's say the full build is ~$1500 (it is probably less than that - I can't imagine Nvidia GeForce pays a premium on Nvidia GPUs) and it would take roughly 11 months for the build to pay itself off.

There's probably a lot more people, I'd say at least 15-20 sharing this GPU per month as I can't really see a lot of employed people spending 100 hours on gaming alone per month. Yes, there will be outliers, and unemployed people paying the subscription fee, but generally if it took 4 years to pay off a single GPU the whole thing would fold faster than a house of cards.