As a way to help entice you into buying a new graphics card for your gaming desktop PC, free games are often included as part of the deal. In the box next to your card will be a promotional code unlocking one or more games on popular digital games portals such as Steam, Origin, or Uplay. It is also possible to sell those codes if you don't want a particular game, but Nvidia is putting an end to that practice.
The old redemption system required the promotional code be entered on Nvidia's website and in return another code is issued to use on a portal directly. As highlighted by Arstechnica, the new system linked to sales of GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 cards checks to see if a qualifying graphics card is installed before unlocking the game, effectively stopping these game codes from being sold or shared.
In order to unlock the free game, the new graphics card and GeForce Experience (GE) software must be installed. The promotional code is then entered into the Redeem section of GE and a hardware check is performed to see if your system is using a qualifying graphics card. If it is, you are asked to login to the associated games portal within GE and then the game is unlocked and linked to that account.
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While this does stop the game codes being sold, it doesn't stop these games being played on other PCs. If you unlock the game on Steam, for example, it becomes just another game in your Steam library meaning you can play it on any PC logged in to your Steam account.
Of course, if you already own the game(s) included with the graphics card, then the codes are effectively useless unless you sell the card on in future (and before the codes expire). Anyone purchasing two graphics cards for SLI is also going to lose out as they will inevitably end up with one set of codes they have no use for.
Full instructions on how the new promotional game unlocking system works are available on Nvidia's website.