The
Nvidia GeForce Partner Program was a
marketing program designed to provide partnering companies with benefits such as public relations support,
video game bundling, and marketing development funds. The program proved to be controversial, with complaints about it possibly being an
anti-competitive practice.
Nvidia canceled the program in May 2018.
History
The GeForce Partner Program was first announced by
Nvidia in a blog post on March 1, 2018. On March 8, 2018, technology website HardOCP released an article which stated that Kyle Bennett (author of the article and editor-in-chief of HardOCP) had interviewed several people and companies who all said that they thought the terms of the GeForce Partner Program were "likely illegal" and that the program would "tremendously hurt consumer choices".
While a number of manufacturers joined the program (including
Asus,
MSI, and
Gigabyte
The gigabyte () is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix ''giga'' means 109 in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one gigabyte is one billion bytes. The unit symbol for the gigabyte is GB.
This defini ...
), it was reported that
HP and
Dell
Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies.
Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...
refused. It was reported that the
US Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction ov ...
and
European Commission were investigating the program.
Nvidia canceled the GeForce Partner Program on May 4, 2018, while asserting that there were a number of "rumors, conjecture, and mistruths" being discussed about the program.
Practices
The program was regarded as an