Nvidia's GeForce affiliate program is drawing anti-consumer criticism.

As if there wasn't enough controversy brewing in the graphics card sector, Nvidia is being accused of pushing a new affiliate program that could ultimately hurt consumers.


The allegation of what amounts to anti-competitive behavior comes from an investigative report by Kyle Bennett at HardOCP. Adding a bit of intrigue to the whole situation, Bennett says he was tipped to the situation by AMD, which had apparently been shopping the story to other sites. So what exactly is going on?






Nvidia stated in a blog post last week that in an "effort to better serve gamers," it was introducing a GeForce Partner Program (GPP).



"The GeForce Partner Program is designed to ensure that gamers have full transparency into the GPU platform and software they’re being sold, and can confidently select products that carry the NVIDIA GeForce promise," Nvidia wrote.


What this means for graphics card manufacturers and OEMs that decide to participate is early access to products, enhanced marketing efforts, social media buzz, and other perks. Nvidia stresses that participation is not mandatory, and that its partners can drop out of the program whenever they want.




So far, so good. When AMD first presented Bennett with the story, he found there wasn't really anything there. However, after digging deeper, he uncovered some concerns and ultimately came to the conclusion that Nvidia's partner program would "greatly, and negatively, impact consumer choice," which would effectively be "decimated."

One of the main issues Bennett raises is that one of the requirements calls for partners to align their gaming brands exclusively with GeForce. To use Asus as an example (and it's not clear if Asus is going to participate), it would no longer be able to sell both Nvidia and AMD graphics cards under its Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand, only GeForce cards.



Bennett also claims that of the companies willing to speak with him anonymously on the subject, they all voiced the same exact concern—that Nvidia would hold back allocation of GPUs if they chose not to participate.



"From all we have talked to, the issue of not allocating GPU inventories to non-GPP partners have not been spelled out contractually, but is rather done on a wink and a nod," Bennett said.


That's on top of losing out on things like early tech engagement, game bundles, sales rebate programs, PR support, and other benefits.


Communication between Bennett and Nvidia seems to be non-existent at this point. When Forbes pinged Nvidia about the situation, Nvidia referred back to its blog post, and in particular the part that says "the program isn't exclusive. Partners continue to have the ability to sell and promote products from anyone." Nvidia also told Forbes that "the program is transparent and beneficial to gamers, and we have nothing further to add at this time."

Nvidia has already done crappy move by not letting board partners not install factory OC vbios... And now this! Maybe, Nvidia is drunk right now!

@Dr. AMK you still think they are the smartest company?

@Papusan @Vasudev @Falkentyne

 

I'm not the one who think that nVidia is the smartest company, I'm nothing to evaluate such company. I'm keep saying that nVidia now is beyond the GPU market, GPU's still important but they didn't get the smartest title just for that.
Hope that you post this information in the main nVidia thread, and I'll try to ask Mod to change the thread name to be dedicated for nVidia.
Regards.

 

I cant say much....

 

There is a seprate nvidia thread? Where?(or are you trying to say to create one?l)

Uhg, nvidia has other sectors rather then gpus and AI? What are they? Links please sir!(i dont want to be biased on mh descision, but i really didnt knew that!)

 

Same thing here....

 

And I believe that all companies are thinking about their own advantages, and how to get more $$$ as much as they can, I mean all of them not only NVIDIA. They don't have feelings to us they are just doing business and fulfil the goals of their master who controls most of them.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/nvidia-thread.806608/
And never mind to post your own, it's just better if we can keep them all in one thread so everyone can participate and can find all information in one place. If you like you can easily ask Mods to move it to the main thread.

 

Being a smart corporate operator often means not letting free market capitalism run its course by letting each buyer make a free, unimpeded choice

Nvidia are smart, but like most corporations, will lie cheat deceive and rip off as much as they are allowed to. And even then, if the fine is tiny compared to the unjustly gained benefit (e. G. Intel flat out bribing OEMs not to use AMD CPUs during the netburst era) they'll choose to do the wrong thing anyway

And since Gameworks is still around making AMD's game optimisation/driver work harder and less effective (since they can't see Nvidia's proprietary end code), Nvidia are clearly smarter than Intel when playing Monopolies.

This sounds like the next thing Nvidia have come up with to make money out of OEMs and ultimately, the end consumer

 

Remember this is only one Blog reporting-until this is independently verified not from a gaming resource forum this story is to be taken with a grain of salt. Where were they when iNtel screwed CPU buyers when AMD was in the low downs. I don't recall them crying fowl if so please show the links of them saying show. So unless the OP can give more links of verified News sources verify the veracity of this claim then this story goes down and VaporWare news.

 

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2018/03/01/geforce-partner-program/

Will official blog do?