A startup plans to use the blockchain to make PlayStation and Xbox obsolete

Overwatch is one of the playable games on PlayKey.

Gaming may soon see its Netflix moment. Already, you can play Doom – a graphics-intensive computer game requiring split-second decision-making – over the internet without downloading it. Even on an old Macbook Air, the lag is barely noticeable. All you need is a fast internet connection.

This feat is being achieved on a daily basis by a Moscow-headquartered startup called PlayKey. Users pay a fee to connect to the company’s servers, which hosts its wide selection of game titles. The gamer’s commands are sent from a personal computer to the server and back. It is like streaming a show on Netflix – except you dictate what happens in the story.

“We’re trying to move everything to the cloud,” Egor Gurjev, co-founder and CEO of PlayKey tells Tech in Asia.

PlayKey is seeing traction on the business side too. While the five-year-old company is not profitable yet because it is investing money in expansion, it claims to be seeing strong growth:

To be sure, PlayKey is not the only game in town. GeForce Now, LiquidSky, and PlayStation Now offer similar experiences.

There’s no certainty this form of “cloud gaming” will become mainstream.  These services may face a common obstacle: Imagine needing to purchase a movie on top of paying a monthly fee just to watch it on Netflix. That is the current situation with cloud gaming, and game publishers are unlikely to budge.

“They like the transactional model, and only a few games are sold on a subscription,” says Gurjev. Yet, he adds that users still get cost savings from not needing to purchase a brand new computer just to play the latest titles.

PlayKey thinks it has another ace up its sleeve: the blockchain. Running a game streaming service is costly because of the specialized servers needed. Amazon Web Services will not do.

To serve its users, PlayKey leases over a hundred Nvidia Grid servers – which are ideal for graphics-intensive applications – in four spots around the world. It’s planning a fifth location in Singapore that will cater to Asians.

Upending the gaming ecosystem