Game industry churns out new top-level games every year, each new one with the more stunning level of graphics and visual design. The downside of this is that the gamers need to own more and more advanced hardware to be able to play, and many simply can't afford it. As a matter of fact, according to the statistics for June 2017 more than 60 percent of gamers are unable to play the latest games with high-quality settings due to limitations of their hardware.
The concept of cloud gaming became an answer to this problem, and among the leading cloud gaming providers, we would like to distinguish Playkey - a Cloud Gaming Platform which is used by 3 million gamers monthly.
Cloud Gaming, What is it?
The main idea behind cloud gaming is that the gamers for a small fee get access to the high-performance remote servers where they launch their games. Thus all the heavy lifting is performed on the server, and the results are delivered to the user's device in a form of the high-quality video stream. The experience is similar to watching videos online and doesn't require the user to own advanced and costly hardware. Basically, this way games can be played on any kind of hardware including smart TVs, MacBooks, old PCs and such. Plus it's not necessary to download and set up hundreds of gigabytes of software.
Playkey provides a high-quality cloud gaming service. The platform is designed to meet the requirements of top-end games. Its infrastructure consists of a network of more than a hundred Nvidia Grid powered servers located in four major European cities. Its library contains most of the latest popular games including Overwatch, PlayerUnknown's Battleground, Friday 13, DOOM and many others.
Decentralized Infrastructure
The most interesting thing, though, is that Playkey is about to become the first company creating decentralized peer-to-peer gaming infrastructure. So far no one else among cloud gaming providers has used this concept. The idea is to create an ecosystem based on the network of independent owners of high-level hardware acting as the cloud gaming service providers. This approach is particularly timely considering rapidly growing demand in the cloud gaming industry combined with high costs of renting hundreds of servers from hosting providers.
At the core of the decentralized cloud architecture lie blockchain technology and PKT token – the cryptocurrency issued by Playkey. The key participants of the platform - "miners" (owners of the high-level computer hardware) and gamers interact using the system of smart contracts. PKT coins are used as a medium of exchange. First, the gamer registers on the playkey.io website and buys PKT coins for real money. Then according to various factors, including location, ping, preferable cost, etc. the gamer selects a server, after which he and the miner enter into a smart contract. The terms of smart contract allows the gamer to play a game using the computing power provided by the miner, and, at the same time, the miner receives from gamer a certain amount in PKT coins as payment according to the terms of the smart contract. Ultimately, the PKT are the main means of exchange in Playkey ecosystem, allowing users to buy gaming subscriptions as well as any other services and products provided by Playkey. The miners, in turn, are able to sell their earned tokens in exchange for other cryptocurrencies or real money.
Playkey Mining
Speaking of miners, for them participation in the Playkey ecosystem, providing hardware to gamers, is much more effective way to earn money with less risks than the actual cryptocurrency mining. All the miners can be split into two categories - basic and professional miners. The difference is that basic miners provide their services from home while the professional miners place their hardware in the Playkey data centers with Tier 2 or higher service level. Miners can develop their own smart contract terms or join the recommended terms reflecting demand on gaming market.
Overall, decentralized cloud gaming market is expected to give the miners an opportunity to earn twice as more than crypto mining. At the same time, Playkey’s distributed infrastructure allows to keep prices lower which makes it more competitive.
What’s Next?
Right now Playkey is doing an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) issuing 100,000,000 PKT tokens. Since PKT is a fixed supply cryptocurrency, it's not subject to inflation in the long term. Units of PKT are fungible, transferable, and are expected to trade on cryptocurrency exchanges. Also, PKT will be implemented on the public Etherium blockchain accordance with the ERC20 (Ethereum Token Standard), which will make it compatible with the existing infrastructure of Etherium ecosystem. The revenues generated by selling PKT tokens will be used to expand Playkey infrastructure. Notably, the servers purchased by the company will be later put on an open auction, so every PKT holder will be able to buy computing capacity that will generate profits for its owner.
The general strategy of Playkey includes expansion to rapidly growing gaming market in Asia as well as USA, Europe, Middle East, and Latin America. Following the trends in gaming industry, Playkey will support and develop cybersport initiatives, local and global gaming competitions as well as introducing services allowing to organize live streams. Also, Playkey is planning to support the creation of content-related services, including game magazines, blogs, youtube channels, game reviews and others.
Useful links
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Authored by: faragly
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Originally published at ethtokens.org on November 20, 2017.