Nvidia could reboot its game bundle with ‘The Crew 2’ and GTX 1080s

By Jon Martindale Published October 28, 2020

The Crew 2 review — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Nvidia may start giving away free games with its graphics cards again, suggesting that the average buyer may now be a more typical gamer than some of the alternative audiences that became all too common over the past year. The first bundle to break the free-game drought of the past few months is reported to be The Crew 2, which will be given out free when gamers buy a qualifying 10-series graphics card or pre-built system with one of those respective GPUs inside.

Blame cryptocurrency miners if you want, but for whatever reason, Nvidia hasn’t been very keen to give out free games with its graphics cards for quite a while now. It even began a new effort in early 2017 to block the resale of free bundled games which had clearly become a problem.

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The leaked promotional giveaway links Ubisoft-published racer, The Crew 2, with Nvidia’s GTX 1080, 1080 Ti, and laptops and desktops fitted with those particular chips. That does put this promotion at the high-end of the 10-series generation, so you may wonder how impactful one free game would be to those spending $600-plus on a new graphics card. However, considering the mid-range has traditionally been the most popular for cryptocurrency miners, it may be that Nvidia wants to limit free games to those who are more likely to be buying cards for gaming.

It’s not clear yet whether this promotion is one that will stretch across the globe either, as VideoCardz’s discovered advertisement is in Dutch. Nvidia has not made the official announcement yet, but if this leaked ad proves to be real, we’ll likely see the GPU giant make some sort of announcement in the near future.

If it does, The Crew 2 is likely to be a good showcase title for anyone buying a new qualifying system or graphics card. The expansive, open-world racer is set to debut on June 29 and on top of introducing new vehicles like planes and boats to the already deep and broad roster of cars and bikes, has a story mode, too.

Alongside the wide variety of races and activities to take part in, we found The Crew 2 to be fantastic to look at it in our hands-on preview, which could make it a great first-game for anyone looking to push the limits of their new, high-end graphics card.

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