Habrahabr user under the nickname IGHOR shared his findings with readers. He uses the NVIDIA GeForce NOW cloud gaming service. Some games get added, while others disappear from the service. Tired of waiting for the return of one of the games, he decided to search for “forbidden games”. However, he picked up the trail of pirates and found something else.
He gained access to the interface for testing GraphQL (data query and manipulation language) queries. Then he managed to find the right query parameters. IGHOR obtained a full list of games from the GFN service. There turned out to be more than 18 thousand of them.
He wanted to check what would happen if he passed the received data into the official application. He couldn't launch all games, and besides games, various applications were also discovered.
Among the findings was not only Mafia: Definitive Edition, unannounced for the service, but also PlayStation exclusive God of War. On the game page, the publisher is listed as “PlayStation Mobile”, and Steam is also mentioned.
It is PlayStation Mobile that is responsible for releasing Sony games on PC; for example, it is listed on the Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition page on Steam.
Among other findings, IGHOR noted Dolphin Emulator, an application created to run copies of games from other consoles. Why the emulator is on the list is not entirely clear. According to the researcher, the service's developers might be playing God of War via another emulator that he was unable to find. In that case, it is not entirely clear why there is a mention of Steam on the GoW page.
For comparison, there is a page for Super Mario Bros. for the Wii console. And there is no mention of Steam there.
There is also an NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL inscription. Presumably, nobody wants the public to know about the developers' penchant for playing pirated games. There is no such inscription on the page with GoW.