Nvidia makes it difficult to sell bundled games from Geforce campaigns

A few days ago, Nvidia released a new so-called bundle, where those who buy a Geforce GTX 1080 or GTX 1070 – either loose or in a ready-made system – can choose between For Honor or Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands. Including games when buying graphics cards is often seen as an added value, but also a chance to resell the codes and get part of the purchase price back.

In conjunction with Nvidia’s latest campaign, Nvidia simplified the game activation process. The game codes must now be activated in the Geforce Experience software, which in turn puts the game into the user’s Uplay account. The new process also has another consequence that makes resale more difficult.

Game coupon codes offered as part of a qualifying GPU or PC purchase are intended for use by the purchaser. As part of the coupon redemption process, Nvidia uses GeForce Experience to perform a hardware verification step to ensure the coupon code is redeemed on the system with the qualifying GPU.

In addition to the Geforce Experience, it is required that the computer has the right graphics circuit (GPU), but exactly what this means is not stated on Nvidia’s official website. To Ars Technica, Nvidia clarifies that the game codes can be activated as long as the graphics card is either a Geforce GTX 1080 (GP104-400) or GTX 1070 (GP104-200).

Why Nvidia is trying to prevent the resale of game codes is not clear. However, it is likely that it comes after pressure from game publishers, who sell game codes to Nvidia and AMD at subsidized prices and are reluctant to see that they are resold by the person who purchased a graphics card.