Bad news for people who want to use Nvidia GeForce Now in South Africa

South Africans hoping to sign up for Rain’s Nvidia GeForce Now offering have been unable to do so since the day after its launch, and the company hasn’t said when it will expand the service to more gamers.

The service launched in December 2023 and sold out within days of its launch. In March 2024, Rain told MyBroadband that it would expand the cloud gaming service to more users later that year.

Rain deliberately limits the number of GeForce Now registrations to prevent members from waiting in long queues to use the service and avoid service degradation for its existing users.

In this regard, many users have said they barely experienced queues during the service’s normal operation in South Africa.

The mobile network operator has not mentioned an expansion date in its responses to subsequent MyBroadband queries about the service.

It made no mention of expanding the service in its most recent feedback.

“We’re thrilled to see the strong interest in GeForce Now from gamers in the region. Ensuring a consistently high-performance cloud gaming experience for our members remains our top priority,” it said.

“We are continually evaluating ways to enhance the experience for our members, and we are working on exciting updates to the service, so stay tuned for more updates.”

MyBroadband also asked Nvidia for comment, but it hadn’t responded by publication.

Rain officially launched its Nvidia GeForce Now offering in South Africa in early December 2023, offering two monthly subscription tiers priced at R200 and R400.

“GeForce Now Powered by Rain cloud gaming is here,” Rain said.

“South Africans can now get their game on anywhere, on any device. Rain has brought the world’s leading cloud gaming service to the African continent for the very first time.”

The cheaper Priority plan gives users access to a dedicated gaming server with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card.

This allows you to play games at a maximum 1440p resolution at 60 frames per second. Priority Plan subscribers’ gaming sessions are limited to six hours.

The R400 Ultra tier gives users access to a dedicated gaming server with an Nvidia GeForce 3080 graphics card, which allows gaming at up to 4K resolution and 120 frames per second.

Gaming sessions for users on the Ultra tier are limited to eight hours. Once a gaming session expires, users must restart the game they are playing and wait in a queue if no servers are available.

Rain’s expansion timeline remains unclear

Subscriptions sold out the day after the service launched, and just over three months later, the network operator told MyBroadband that it had plans to expand the service by the end of 2024.

“The Nvidia GeForce Now subscriptions were sold out on the first day, due to much anticipation from the South African gaming community,” Rain said.

“We realise there is increased demand for the service, and we are planning to be able to expand the service offering and capacity later in the year.”

In November 2024, Rain told MyBroadband that it still planned to expand the service to more users. However, it made no mention of when this would happen.

“We realise there is increased demand for the service and will keep you posted on future server updates,” it said.

It said the most popular games on the GeForce Now platform included Fortnite, Genshin Impact, and Rocket League.

In February 2025, Rain said more “seats” would be available soon.

“In addition, we are working with Nvidia to accelerate the installation of new GeForce Now GPUs to take the gaming experience to the next level,” it added.

The mobile network said South African users had recorded over 10.7 million minutes of combined playing time on the service since it launched.