I game mainly on pc and the one thing I have loved about having an Nvidia graphics card is the gamestream part so I can steam and play my games from other devices around the house. Gamesteam was one of the reasons i switched from Amd. Well I didn’t realise until the time of writing this at the beginning of Feb that Nvidia announced in November 2022 that they are shutting down the gamesteam part.

The main annoucement from Nvidia which you can read HERE mainly this about removing the gamesteam function from Nvidia shield which is their TV streaming device . Which will be rolling out mid Febuary then the game stream on the shield will stop working. This at the moment does not mean that mid Feb the server side will be removed from the graphic driver. It just says will be removed in future geforce experience updates. Which major updates don’t come as often as the annoying bug fix updates.

For me personally I use the gamesteam in the driver to stream to a third party client called moonlight, which over the years in functionality has surpassed the official Nvidia client. Moonlight is available on multiple devices from android, ios, browser based, windows Linux etc even a ps vita port. I use moonlight mainly on my Samsung tablet with a extendable controller see a review of one I have HERE. As for me unfortunately I have a spinal problem which means I can’t always sit in my office to play games and I’m in bed lot of the time, so streaming games to a portable device is great for me. Moonlight have given a statement See HERE

So there does seems to be options

Nvida has recommended using the steam streaming software steamlink, now over the years I have tried this I’ve not been a fan from software problems to just not enough options, also importing games from other services like GOG & epic. But if you use steam it is worth looking into, I may have another go myself.

Another option is to stop the Nvidia graphics driver updating which I wrote about HERE, though this was wrote years ago and the work around I found may or may not work depending on configuration etc, though I will look into seeing if this still can be. Though the one problem with using this method is that you will be stuck with that version. So when bug fixes come out you won able able to get these updates. And then when games come out that need a feature that maybe in a new driver you may have problems.

Though the option I’m going to try is an open source version of the gamesteam server software called sunshine you can download the latest version from Github HERE, now this work not only with Nvidia cards but also Amd & even Intel cards. And as I’m due for graphics card upgrade this gives me more options. I do hope that the development on sunshine continues as I’ve been as user of moonlight over the years and its the best way for me to stream games from my pc. I will update this article once I have tested out sunshine with all the devices I use.

There are other software pc streaming options, some other free and some paid subscriptio. though over the years I have always carried on using gamesteam + moonlight. As I never had any problems with either the stream quality or lag. It is unfortunate that Nvidia are shutting down the software, though for them really they want you to move over to their subscription service GeForce now. Which is cloud based, which yes is good and a lot better than the now defunkgoogle stadia. Though if anyone want cloud gaming the best service is Xbox game pass, I do use game pass ultimate as for both Xbox and pc, shared between myself and my daugther. And the Xcloud cloud streaimg is great, though you do need a fast internet connection. At home the max speed we can get is 32mbits, and this is shared between four of us, so when others are on youtube, Netflix etc, the cloud game streaming does suffer.

Well I’ve gone on long enough now, so hopefully will update this soon with what I have chosen for my needs of steaming from my pc to my devices, as would hate to loose that function.