Nvidia GeForce Partner Program Affiliate program

2018

Closing of the program

At the beginning of May, 2018 the Nvidia company officially announced closing of the scandalous affiliate program after received in the address of charge of blackmail.

Recently it was much told about our GeForce Partner Program program. Rumors, guesses and defects go beyond its purpose. Instead of fighting against misinformation, we decided to cancel this program, says Nvidia.

Though Nvidia publicly did not open a condition of GeForce Partner Program, journalistic investigations showed that the program gives to its participants serious advantages, however demands from them failure from use in specific game brands of products of AMD.

Nividia closed the affiliate program after charges of blackmail of the companies

Confirmations of this blackmail was the fact that ASUS was forced to create the separate Arez brand for the video cards AMD Radeon, the MSI company removed from the range of Gaming of the Radeon device, and the new products Gigabyte for some reason did not carry to the Aorus brand. AMD started an advertizing campaign under the name Freedom of Choice (with engl. "freedom of choice").

Besides, the American and European antimonopoly authorities expressed the intentions to make investigations.

Even despite closing of GeForce Partner Program the Nvidia company aims to represent to show the events positively and notes:  "This great time to become the partner of GeForce and to be a part of the most fast-growing gaming platform in the world which is rich with advanced technologies". At this Nvidia tells nothing about the future steps and cooperation with those partners who already agreed to program conditions earlier.

Not clearly, whether producers will return to former designations of the products: for example, as ASUS will arrive with the new Arez brand. By May 7, 2018 the video cards Arez are on sale in official online store of the producer.^[1]

Pressure upon partners for undermining sales of AMD

In March, 2018 GeForce Partner Program knew of manifestation of unfair competition from Nvidia within the affiliate program. It became clear that the company pays the partners and uses other levers of pressure to undermine sales of the competitor — AMD.

Nvidia drew the attention itself of AMD to manifestation of anti-competition practice, however the company was limited to the general expressions without refining of specific illegal actions of Nvidia. The HardOCP portal made own investigation during which representatives of seven participating companies Nvidia GeForce Partner Program were polled.

Blackmail on Nvidia. To partners prohibit to buy AMD processors

However respondents or at all refused to discuss the program, or did not want to communicate under record. Those who decided to talk to journalists made it on condition of preserving of anonymity, being afraid to lose work or to experience negative reaction from Nvidia.

According to HardOCP, one of the main requirements to the companies which want to take part in Nvidia GeForce Partner Program is in that the specific brand of this partner was connected only with the GeForce brand — i.e., in fact, used only the video cards Nvidia.

Therefore ASUS decided to start a separate brand (Ares) for the products using the graphic solutions AMD reports the DigiTimes portal with reference to the Chinese edition Daily Apple. The Taiwanese company is going to use the Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand for promotion of the equipment with solutions of Nvidia.

According to Daily Apple, by April 9, 2018 others of video cards, including Microstar International (MSI) and Gigabyte Technology, did not approve plans for an occasion of participation of the companies in the new affiliate program of Nvidia started at the beginning of March yet.

Participants of Nvidia GeForce Partner Program get from vendor full support, including marketing and technical and also access to early versions of graphic solutions, different bonuses and discounts.

Observers of HardOCP claim that Nvidia demands reduction of cooperation with AMD from partners. In case of refusal producers of video cards are threatened with reduction of quotas for graphic processors, and it, in turn, creates threat of weak sales.

Nvidia abstains from informative comments about potential abuse by the dominant position in the market of graphic processors. According to DigiTimes, about 70% of sales of discrete GPU are the share of Nvidia, and AMD is content with a 30 percent share.

Nvidia only emphasizes that the new affiliate program absolutely transparent, and participation in it voluntary. So GeForce Partner Program does not contain coercion elements.

At the end of March, 2018 the Chief Editor of HardOCP on the Twitter blog noted that the CEO of Nvidia Jen-Hsun Huang never mentioned the affiliate program on the stage within GTC 2018 — the main Nvidia conference at which the company tells about the last achievements and plans. It is unclear, why Huang did not begin to explain directly to consumers, developers and partners that such GeForce Partner Program and that it is transparency, the journalist noted.

In HardOCP after the made investigation stated suspicion that the new affiliate program of Nvidia harms the market and should be taken in attention by antimonopoly authorities. The initiative prevents business with AMD and Intel companies, strongly influences the choice of consumers, and program conditions probably are illegal, reporters consider. It is possible that history will receive continuation in the form of claims from Intel and AMD to Nvidia.^[2]

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