its been like that for a good while now, I remember when I first tried geforce now playing cod 2019, then at work I wanted to setup my classes during lunch and it was gone, turned out blizzard/activision got mad that nvidia was letting people play their game even though you had to own the game so they pulled it off the service

Guess the cost tradeoff depends on how much you play and how updated you keep your PC. My PC can't play Cyberpunk at 4k 120fps. You must have good Internet though.

Owning a computer, especially if a desktop, makes more sense, in my understanding.

In my country, a gaming laptop is about €2500, while a decent gaming desktop starting on the €800.

Even when factoring in the energy, unless running a 1KW+ machine, 7 days a week, non stop, it still makes sense. You have your data in your machine, in your home.

I have personally done the math for myself, and it is ultimately cheaper to subscribe to the middle tier of GFN. That was before any price hikes though, I am yet to pay or calculate the new prices, not sure when they start, but I am fairly sure it’s still cheaper at least here where I live.

In addition, it relieves a lot of stress and time spent on buying, fetching, installing and changing the thermal pastes and keeping it clean etc, as well as doesn’t contribute to the already barely tolerable heat in the summer, which high-end GPUs tend to do under stress.

All around it’s much more convenient for me, since I only need those high-end specs for gaming, and have a good light laptop setup for work and other uses.

But YMMV, of course.

Edit: We do have very affordable and fast internet here though, so that’s probably a thing not available everywhere, which would make this much less convenient. In my country, it’s not a concern even traveling.