Gadgetory

to ensure you don't miss a single hardware box video hit subscribe then tap the Bell welcome back to this special edition of the hardware box news corner it's the weekend here in Australia so I'm gonna keep this one relatively short in video today has decided to pull the plug on their hugely controversial GeForce Partner Program gotta say I was pretty surprised to wake up and read about this news so let's dig into what Nvidia had to say in their official statement the blog post written by John T Paul starts by saying a lot has been said recently about our GeForce Partner Program the rumors conjecture and mistruths go far beyond its intent rather than battling misinformation we've decided to cancel the program Nvidia states of the GPP had a simple goal ensuring that gamers know what they are buying and can make a clear choice and that the GPP was about making sure gamers who want Nvidia tech get Nvidia tech the statement continues with GPP we asked our partners to brand their products in a way that would be crystal clear the choice of GPU greatly defines a gaming platform so the GPU brand should be clearly transparent no substitute GPUs hidden behind a pile of techno jargon still today we are pulling the plug on GPP to avoid any distraction from the super exciting work we're doing to bring amazing advances to PC gaming there's a few other sentences in the statement but the general gist is pretty simple nvidia cancelled the geforce partner program because of the negative public perception around the program in pretty much any news story surrounding Nvidia you could head to the comments and find dozens of posters slamming Nvidia on the GPP even their partners like gigabyte masseuse and msi were affected with seemingly unrelated announcements being flooded with hate comments relating to the GPP and to be fair there was a lot of reason for that hate as uncovered by Kyle Bennett at heart OCP and covered here in videos from several months ago the GeForce partner program wasn't just ensuring that gamers know what they're buying the program appeared to be an active attempt to control and videos and squeeze competitors like AMD out of partners most well-known gaming brands leaving these brands exclusively for g-force the consequences for not agreeing to do this reportedly included being denied marketing development funds and other important things a partner would need to remain competitive in the graphics market one of my most interesting and perhaps telling is that Nvidia decided to cancel the jpp rather than properly explain what the GPP was all about if nvidia didn't want to cop such flack for the GPP and didn't want such rumors conjecture and mistruths floating around there were basically two things they could have done one would have been to explain how the GPP worked in an official capacity putting to bed any of the rumors and reports all while providing much-needed clarity around the agreement documents and invidious goals with the program this probably would have allowed the GPP to continue existing which according to invidious own explanations so far would have benefited gamers everywhere the other was to simply cancel the program entirely without explaining anything and that's the path they went down there are quite clearly some aspects of the GPP that NVIDIA doesn't want to explain or clarify and if the hard OCP report on the GBP is accurate that's probably for a good reason so they figured you know cancelling it is an easier way out of course there are potentially other factors at play too wanting to end negative public perception is one reason for a cancellation but preventing any possible litigation or antitrust investigations could be another some of the alleged terms in the GBP documents appeared to be quite anti-competitive and we know how the EU loves to hand out billion-dollar fines for such indiscretion so cancelling the program could have prevented that sort of thing in the end what was supposed to be a program that invidious own words added transparency and benefited gamers ended up being one of the least transparent moves the company has made recently and didn't benefit gamers in any appreciable way and this lack of transparency refusal to discuss the GPP with the media poor official explanations and unwillingness to clarify supposed miss Booth's still leaves us with many questions even after this news of cancellation what terms were actually included in the GeForce Partner Program documents how many partners agreed to the original GPP terms and how many declined does this program cancellation actually avoid any and all sign GPP contracts or doesn't just mean the program isn't taking any new participants is the GPP just going to be replaced under a different name with more secrecy surrounding it and video almost certainly won't address these questions publicly and I think there's still a fair bit more to play out in this story to get to the bottom of everything but for now the gpause partner program is no more and for many that will be reason to celebrate particularly AMD who wanted this program investigated in the first place what happens now is unclear in some situations the damage of the GPP has already been done a sues for example launched a new ares brand for radeon graphics cards last month replacing the now geforce exclusive rog brand MSI appeared to be starting a process of removing Radeon cards from their top tier gaming expand gigabyte as well launched an RX 580 powered external GPU without the Auris branding that was found on equivalent nvidia products will these companies reinstate Radeon products to their main gaming brands or continue with separate Radeon brands we just don't know at this point in wrapping this one up I'm honestly still a bit surprised that this cancellation happened I really thought Nvidia would just go about their business and continue to not talk about the GPP until everyone had forgotten about it what do you guys make of this news did you see it coming let us know in the comments below support us on patreon if you feel like it at patreon.com slash Hardware boxed and I'll catch you in the next one you