Starting on March 5, GeForce Now users enjoying the service for free will find themselves faced with ads while they’re waiting for their turn to play. NVIDIA has sent out an email to free users, telling them that they’ll experience “up to two minutes of video sponsorship messages before each gaming session while in queue.” It will provide support for the free service, the company said. NVIDIA also believes that the ads will lead to shorter wait times for free users. Company spokesperson Stephanie Ngo has confirmed the change to The Verge.
GeForce Now gamers in the free tier can enjoy one hour of gaming at no cost, but they get cut off and have to wait in queue every time their hour-long gaming session is done. The most avid gamers who don’t want to pay for GeForce Now’s $10 Priority or $20 Ultimate subscription tiers will have to sit through ads multiple times. That said, the ads only show up in queue and not in the middle of a user’s playtime, so they’re not intrusive in the way Netflix’s or Amazon Prime Videos’ ads are.
NVIDIA recently became the third most valuable company in the United States, overtaking Alphabet, and the fourth overall worldwide. The company is now valued at $1.83 trillion and has an 80 percent share in the high-end chip market, thanks to the AI boom over the past year.
