A new company is has thought up an ingenious way to help two groups who have been suffering lately: crypto-miners and PC gamers. Vectordash’s new cloud-gaming service will pay miners with strong graphics processing units (GPUs), and sell that processing power to PC gamers who can’t buy those video cards for themselves, Techcrunch reports.
Customers who bought a PC that can’t support a powerful GPU, or just can’t afford an expensive upgrade, can now pay $28 a month to run their games on the cloud service. Assuming their internet connection to the cloud is consistent, they can then enjoy high-fidelity gaming that their PC would otherwise not support.
Miners, who may not be profiting from crypto-mining during the long crypto-winter, can rent their GPU to the service for as much as $105 a month. Vectordash is specifically relying on the cryptowinter lasting a little bit longer so they can capitalize on miners desperate for any income.
The limiting factor, other than the state of the cryptocurrency community, are the number of willing participants on the mining side. If they don’t get a critical mass of GPUs supporting the service, it may be difficult to offer a low-latency service to gamers.
They also risk running up against bigger competition. More information on Google’s cloud gaming service is expected soon. Vectordash will be hoping they can get a few solid months of operation in and build something bigger before they potentially get squashed.
This type of service will come as dark humor for some gamers. During the height of the cryptocurrency craze, gamers complained that GPUs were impossible to purchase because they were being swept up by miners. Now those same miners will rent them some processing power, or fear bankruptcy.
In the meantime, GPU manufacturers aren’t worried about the state of miners or the crypto market. Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, said last year that GPUs are made for gaming and research, and crypto mining is only an added benefit of their capabilities.
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