Earlier this year, Google announced the end of its efforts to get Steam running on Chromebooks, but it’s not done trying to make these low-power laptops into gaming machines. Google has teamed up with Nvidia to offer a version of GeForce Now cloud streaming that is perplexingly limited in some ways and generous in others. Starting today, anyone who buys a Chromebook will get a free year of a new service called GeForce Now Fast Pass. There are no ads and less waiting for server slots, but you don’t get to play very long.
Back before Google killed its Stadia game streaming service, it would often throw in a few months of the Pro subscription with Chromebook purchases. In the absence of its own gaming platform, Google has turned to Nvidia to level up Chromebook gaming. GeForce Now (GFN), which has been around in one form or another for more than a decade, allows you to render games on a remote server and stream the video output to the device of your choice. It works on computers, phones, TVs, and yes, Chromebooks.
The new Chromebook feature is not the same GeForce Now subscription you can get from Nvidia. Fast Pass, which is exclusive to Chromebooks, includes a mishmash of limits and bonuses that make it a pretty strange offering. Fast Pass is based on the free tier of GeForce Now, but users will get priority access to server slots. So no queuing for five or 10 minutes to start playing. It also lacks the ads that Nvidia’s standard free tier includes. Fast Pass also uses the more powerful RTX servers, which are otherwise limited to the $10-per-month ($100 yearly) Performance tier.
On the flip side, Fast Pass limits you to a mere 10 hours of game streaming per month. Up to five of those hours can roll over to the next month if unused. Nvidia’s free GFN has a session limit of one hour, but it sounds like that is not the case for Fast Pass—we’ve asked Google to clarify and will report back.
According to Google, GeForce Now Fast Pass allows users to stream more than 2,000 PC games, but that buries the lede a bit. That’s the total number of games that are supported in GeForce Now’s free tier—the so-called “read-to-play” catalog. The paid tiers support about twice as many games as “install-to-play,” which allows you to install additional games on the remote server to play them.
These big numbers don’t tell the whole story, though. As with the other GFN tiers, Fast Pass doesn’t include any games. Instead, you have to link your accounts on Steam, Epic, or Xbox to stream the titles you own. It’s unclear what happens at the end of your free year. Google has not confirmed whether you can pay to continue with Fast Pass or if you’ll be nudged toward a standard GeForce Now subscription.
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