Steam and Epic are literally app stores. I guess you have to link an extra account to use it with GeForce Now? For that minuscule amount of extra friction you get access to a much larger set of games on stores that won’t shut down when Google gets bored in a year or two.

edit: in what way does Steam or Epic expect you to understand how to use a “gaming PC”?

In the way that those are apps that gamers install on their gaming pc.

You're not making any sense to me. Steam is just an app store. A "gaming PC" is just a regular PC with more powerful hardware in it, using software on it does not take any special skills specific to gaming PCs.

And as the other commenter points out, playing steam games via geforce now doesn't even require installing the steam app anyway, it's just an account link.

I am struggling to find an analogy but here goes. I think it's like the difference between a console in the cloud v/s a gaming pc in the cloud. For casual gamers, a console in the cloud with minimal configuration - switch it on and start playing - makes the most sense. If GeForce Now is a hosted gaming PC, I assume running a Windows O/S, it likely has the same configuration overhead of PC games, which most casual gamers don't want to deal with.

Can you elaborate? You don’t need to install Steam or the game to play that game on GeForce Now.

Have you ever used Steam on Geforce Now? There is absolutely no friction. You do not even have to know Steam exists. You just search for the game you want, and do one more sign-up.

I have. I used Geforce now, stadia, luna. I bought the hardware controllers. I've tried all of these platforms across all different form factors (pcs, laptop, ipads, iphones, android, LG television). I've signed up for individual games, game publisher channels UBISoft+. I invest millions of dollars into companies and my thesis is product driven. All of this is research I conduct myself, for myself. That isn't to say these services have gotten better since I last tested (Geforce i probably tested in November). From what I remember, it was a PC virtual machine with a queue system for availability. It wasn't "magic". Stadia is magic. Luna is somewhere in between.