Cloud-Based Gaming in China With Cloud Union [INTERVIEW]

PC gaming is remarkably popular in China. But because of the high barrier of entry, many Chinese gamers are limited to gaming in smoke-filled net cafes, and often even those computers aren’t capable of running the latest and greatest games. “Does it run Crysis?” has been a refrain in the Western PC gaming community for years, and systems that can run Crysis are indeed powerful — but they’re also expensive. So Chinese gamers have mostly stuck with older games like Counter-Strike and World of Warcraft, or played Chinese games with more modest hardware requirements.

But what if hardware requirements could be eliminated entirely on the user end? That’s what the folks behind Cloud Union (云游戏) are trying to do in China. Founded in 2008 before “cloud computing” was a widespread buzzword, the start-up has been plugging along for years and now offers 65 cloud-based games, many of them quite popular and technologically advanced Western games, to Chinese users so they can run Crysis without having to spend the several thousand dollars it would take to buy a system that can run Crysis.

We sat down with Cloud Union’s CEO, Deng Di (邓迪), to learn more about Cloud Union.

How did you come up with the idea for Cloud Union?

Actually, we didn’t start off planning a cloud service, nor were we thinking about a game distribution channel at first. The problem I saw was that in China, people spend a lot of money to buy these expensive computers, but then in a couple of years the computer is already outdated and needs to be updated or replaced. And there are many in China who can’t afford computers. I recall when I was a student, all of my roommates and I pooled our money together to buy our first computer, and we took turns using it. At that time I was thinking: could there be a way to make a computer that many people could share, thus reducing the hardware cost? I had been thinking about this for some time, so when [cloud] technology began to mature, that’s the area I chose.

What was Cloud Union like at first? Can you describe for us the company’s development?

Back in 2008, we started Cloud Union in a two-bedroom residential apartment. Because our project was a bit ahead of its time, no one understood it, and it took us a full year before we got our first check from an angel investor. Then we worked for another whole year [without investment], and were refused many times, before we got our first infusion of venture capital. We’ve developed from a few people at the beginning to over sixty people today, most of whom work in R&D.

Can you describe what using Cloud Union is like from a user perspective?

For users, it’s very simple. You download a client, install it, and then you can start playing games via the internet. Most of our games are bigger than 5 GB, but the user doesn’t have to pay attention to the size of a game, and can switch from one to another at any time. The user also doesn’t need to worry about their computer not being able to support the newest games; any PC computer can connect [and play these games] via our platform. We now also have a flash version that looks and works the same as the downloadable client, but that’s not released yet. Once the Flash version is online, people with Mac computers will also be able to play.