NVIDIA Ending GeForce Partner Program

[Guest_Jim_*]

According to a post on NVIDIA's blog, the company has ended its GeForce Partner Program (GPP). This is the program Kyle Bennett of [H]ardOCP published an article on back in March where he states his sources, who required anonymity to speak with him, and the documents he saw painted a very different picture of GPP than what NVIDIA stated publicly. According to the GPU company, GPP was to provide full transparency about the graphics cards people purchase, and according to the new blog post, "GPP had a simple goal – ensuring that gamers know what they are buying and can make a clear choice." The information Kyle Bennett shared, however, described a program that required companies cease marketing non-GeForce aligned hardware under their developed gaming brands (ASUS Republic of Gamers and Gigabyte Aorus, for example) and if a company did not join GPP, it could see lose marketing funds, engineering assets, launch partner status, and more.

Since that article, I cannot recall seeing any official response from NVIDIA to clarify or contradict the claims made by Bennett, but AMD responded. In the middle of April the GPU competitor posted a blog post of its own with its commitment to promoting freedom of choice for gamers, and published a video on YouTube doing the same. On that same day, ASUS announced its AREZ brand of AMD Radeon GPUs, presumably so there could be a gamer-targeting brand for AMD graphics cards, without it being labelled as the company's gaming brand, Republic of Gamers, and thus a way around the alleged terms of GPP. Then a week after that, Scott Herkelman, Corporate VP and General Manager of AMD Radeon gaming, invited resellers to share more stories with him of competition using "funding and allocation to restrict or block your ability to market and sell Radeon based products." Also at that time Bennett claimed NVIDIA had started a disinformation campaign against him.

Now, after all of that has happened, NVIDIA has decided to end the program, stating that "rather than battling misinformation, we have decided to cancel the program." NVIDIA never publicly battled this 'misinformation' it is referring to. While this might have ended the "distraction" GPP caused the company, I personally suspect the story is not over yet for a few reasons. Among them is Kyle Bennett stating, "there is still a bit more of the story to tell, and that will likely come out soon," at [H]ardOCP. Other reasons include the impact this has had on various brands and the AMD's hinting other AIB partners might have also been working on new brands, like ASUS AREZ.

Source: NVIDIA

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