Yandex has decided to enter the cloud gaming market. She began accepting applications to participate in a closed testing service called "Plus Gaming".
Now there are more than 150 games in the Plus Gaming library. These are games from Steam, as well as Lesta Games projects ("World of Tanks" and "World of Ships"). Yandex promises that new games will appear in the service every month.
So far, "Plus Gaming" is available only on Windows computers. By the end of the year, the service will also get macOS support. Whether it will be released on other platforms is not reported.
As for the payment, it will consist of two parts. First, the user will have to pay directly for connecting to the service (up to 250 rubles, depending on the load on the servers), and then for the actual time in the game (80 rubles per hour without a Yandex Plus subscription or 55 rubles per hour with a subscription).
According to Yandex, at the moment, Plus Gaming is most stable in the Central, Volga and Northwestern Federal Districts of Russia, with the exception of Kaliningrad and Arkhangelsk. It is desirable that users have an Internet connection with a speed of at least 30 MB/s.
In a comment to the Kommersant newspaper, a Yandex representative said that during the testing, the company is going to test a number of product hypotheses and make sure of the interest of the audience.
Experts interviewed by the newspaper add that Yandex had previously purchased a large number of video cards for training neural networks and other needs. The company provides businesses with access to its infrastructure through the cloud, but due to the high cost of services, some of the equipment may be idle. "Plus Gaming" will allow you to additionally monetize video cards.