Nvidia’s free-tier GeForce Now will soon show ads while you’re waiting to play

Nvidia’s completely free, no-strings attached trial of its cloud gaming service GeForce Now is about to be very slightly less of a deal — on Wednesday February 28th, Nvidia tells The Verge, users will start seeing ads.

They’re only for the free tier — not Priority or Ultimate — and even then, it sounds like they won’t interrupt your gameplay. “Free users will start to see up to two minutes of ads while waiting in queue to start a gaming session,” writes Nvidia spokesperson Stephanie Ngo.

Currently, the free tier does often involve waiting in line for a remote computer to free up before every hour of free gameplay — now, I guess there’ll be a few ads too. Nvidia says the ads should help pay for the free tier of service, and that it expects the change “will reduce average wait times for free users over time.”

My problem with GeForce Now’s free tier has never been its queues, but rather that it’s by far the least impressive version of the company’s service and doesn’t show what cloud gaming is truly capable of. For that, you really need to try GeForce Now Ultimate, which gives you the power of an RTX 4080 in the cloud, greatly reduced latency, and now G-Sync monitor support. But it currently still costs $20 a month, with no free trial.

The company plans to send out emails tomorrow to all free-tier users tomorrow, February 27th, to let them know about the ads.