Gaming As A Service: Computing Clouds for the Gaming Industry



    Pretty tired of our readers with numerous informative articles from the Cloud Technologies in Russia forum : Part I , Part II , Part III , Part IV , Part V , Part VI , we left something sweet for dessert ...

    And so today we will talk about the latest facet of application cloud technologies, about the intersection of IAAS and PAAS areas - Game As A Service. What is the difference between the GAAS model and traditional online gaming systems? There is very little information about this and even here on Habré they do not talk about it, although the topic begins to gain momentum in the Silicon Valley. Therefore, we decided to put together a round table at our forum and invite our domestic adherents of this technology there. What came of this, read, see below.



    Participants:
    Discussion moderator, Evgeny Shagalov , development manager,  RUVDS
    Alexey Lykov , technical director, Playkey
    Alexey Khoroshilov , general director, UltraVDS
    Andrey Tomilenko , managing director, Big Data Host





    Introducing the participants of the round table briefly and not bothering the guests with a long foreplay, moderator Evgeny Shagalov , development manager, RUVDS, immediately got down to business:
    - So, Alexey, can you tell us what were the prerequisites for the appearance of such a model and what is its essence?



    Alexey Lykov, CTO, Playkey:

    - Ok, I won’t, I didn’t want to tell much about Playkey so that this was not such an advertisement, and the audience of end users is not the same, not a large audience. But, in fact, Playkey is a game service that brings some kind of variety to life, a funny thing. People play and spend billions of money on this all over the world. According to our statistics, every sixth person plays games. Every sixth pays and every second plays in the world, just at least once launched a toy. Every sixth at least paid a dollar in his life. This is actually a very large market that we are trying to capture.

    Speaking of history, how we came to this, we are the backbone of the former Enaza team that still exists. We sold digital content, were one of the largest and are now the largest provider, distributor of digital content. Enaza, it sold to large carriers such as Rostelecom, a Fun project that still exists. For MTS, for Svyaznoy did a pilot project, for M. Video there. All the digital content that is being sold is through us. But over time, as for games, the digital distribution of games, it is slowly dying. Dies in the sense that major game developers like Electronic Arts or Ubisoft are starting to build their platforms. Electronic Arts last July completely closed digital distribution worldwide. Just shut it. And now users can buy it simply in their client. The age of globalization, in fact, was to be expected. To this, everyone else will come in the future.

    Actually, we all understood this and it's time to come up with something. Then we saw the Onlive service, which appeared seven years ago. Cloud Gaming, when the game is launched on the service, and a video stream is broadcast to the user. Thus, piracy is excluded and technology can be provided with a service to users, they do not need to buy a powerful computer, they can play BattleField on their "calculator" conditionally. That is, on any device that can play video and is connected to the Internet. It can be a phone, smartphone, tablet. We now focus only on PC and Mac OS.



    Let's turn on the first slide. True, I don’t remember what is there ... The target audience of this product is, after all, PCs and console games. As for MMOs of mobile and casual games, mobile and casual, well, first of all, everyone has a mobile phone, casual is a weak hardware, it will also work on any calculator. MMO, console games and PC download this is what we can close. If the user previously bought a console for himself, then here he does not need to buy it for 500 bucks and buy the game also in the service on the Xbox Store or somewhere else.

    We cover this audience, here it is shown, 1.2 billion players worldwide. Smart Market - 70 trillion (billion) dollars and Market growth of 6% per year. Despite this, it shows here the distribution and on the right is the growth. It can be seen that the mobile market is growing at 35% per year, the console and games for downloading are falling, but this suggests that only the ratio is falling. The total revenue is still growing and continues to play further.



    Let's look at the next slide. Well, here's the actual question we asked Electronic Arts: are all users, so you released a new toy, how many users can play with you? Here they say that only 5% of users can play in the first year. That is, for all the others, the computer simply does not pull. And they need to buy a computer, upgrade it, buy a video card, well, do something. Either put up and play with the worst settings, or ask your parents for money, most often because the audience is school. Of course, adults also play. If we compare 2013-2014-2015: if in 2013 a new game was released, 23% of users could play it, in 2014 - 14%, in 2015 - already 5% of players. It’s just that computers don’t update, maybe there is no money or something like that. Users cannot play. Actually, we solve this problem,



    Once again about technology: the streaming cycle is shown on the left - the game runs on the server, turns into a video stream, is sent via the Internet as a video streaming to the user, and the user sends his control by pressing the buttons and mouse to the server. This cycle is so fast that the user does not notice that he is playing on a remote server.

    Of course, now I will tell you what is needed for this. First of all, these are game servers. There are wonderful representatives of cloud hosting here, I tell everyone that if you have tomorrow, we will rent you tomorrow. Unfortunately, no one has. The reality is that no. It’s clear why, because there is no demand. We are the only ones here, we want these servers, we are usually ready to lease them to the usual hosting, transfer all risks to us, but then the essence of cloud hosting ends somewhere. They should all learn to fumble resources between other companies, i.e. the rental model just doesn’t work. She is not. The only supplier now on a rental model is Amazon, who invested in good iron at the time 4 years ago, which of course is also outdated and provides for virtual machines with graphic accelerators in large volumes. In small volumes, some providers have one or two servers with some top-cards. Therefore, the problem that confronts us is to create this infrastructure or to encourage those companies that are engaged in creating it. I would love to find those people or companies who could use these services, servers and fumble with dreams: generate bitcoins at night when our users do not play; Engineering calculations should be carried out in auto cades at night. This is due to peak consumption. In our country, players mostly play in the evening after school, after work, and during the day, no matter what is idle, workers can work. There is such a problem, I would like to solve it. While we are building our cloud, unfortunately. In small volumes, some providers have one or two servers with some top-cards. Therefore, the problem that confronts us is to create this infrastructure or to encourage those companies that are engaged in creating it. I would love to find those people or companies who could use these services, servers and fumble with dreams: generate bitcoins at night when our users do not play; Engineering calculations should be carried out in auto cades at night. This is due to peak consumption. In our country, players mostly play in the evening after school, after work, and during the day, no matter what is idle, workers can work. There is such a problem, I would like to solve it. While we are building our cloud, unfortunately. In small volumes, some providers have one or two servers with some top-cards. Therefore, the problem that confronts us is to create this infrastructure or to encourage those companies that are engaged in creating it. I would love to find those people or companies who could use these services, servers and fumble with dreams: generate bitcoins at night when our users do not play; Engineering calculations should be carried out in auto cades at night. This is due to peak consumption. In our country, players mostly play in the evening after school, after work, and during the day, no matter what is idle, workers can work. There is such a problem, I would like to solve it. While we are building our cloud, unfortunately. which is before us is to create this infrastructure or to encourage those companies that are engaged in creating it. I would love to find those people or companies who could use these services, servers and fumble with dreams: generate bitcoins at night when our users do not play; Engineering calculations should be carried out in auto cades at night. This is due to peak consumption. In our country, players mostly play in the evening after school, after work, and during the day, no matter what is idle, workers can work. There is such a problem, I would like to solve it. While we are building our cloud, unfortunately. which is before us is to create this infrastructure or to encourage those companies that are engaged in creating it. I would love to find those people or companies who could use these services, servers and fumble with dreams: generate bitcoins at night when our users do not play; Engineering calculations should be carried out in auto cades at night. This is due to peak consumption. In our country, players mostly play in the evening after school, after work, and during the day, no matter what is idle, workers can work. There is such a problem, I would like to solve it. While we are building our cloud, unfortunately. when our users do not play; Engineering calculations should be carried out in auto cades at night. This is due to peak consumption. In our country, players mostly play in the evening after school, after work, and during the day, no matter what is idle, workers can work. There is such a problem, I would like to solve it. While we are building our cloud, unfortunately. when our users do not play; Engineering calculations should be carried out in auto cades at night. This is due to peak consumption. In our country, players mostly play in the evening after school, after work, and during the day, no matter what is idle, workers can work. There is such a problem, I would like to solve it. While we are building our cloud, unfortunately.

    The second problem is, of course, the Internet. Need 5-15 Mbps - 10 Mbps is a comfortable video stream. The big stream is online streaming, it eats a little more traffic than this movie - 3 passes were compressed, optimized and a good picture was output. This is work with providers who can be our customers. Recently, yesterday, a tender for cloud games was closed at Rostelecom, maybe we will win and see. Naturally, providers play such a significant role here when they can provide a quality channel to the end user. If in the data center, I have no doubt, good equipment and a good channel, then the Last Mile is still the worst Internet: this is the D-Link router, which is at home in the kitchen and does not catch well through the wall; network losses begin, and for online streaming, this is critical. Waiting for users and connecting a wired Internet, or buying a high-quality Wi-Fi router with a frequency of not 2.4 GHz but 5 GHz is a difficult task. You can play while on PS and Mac, there’s nothing complicated here - it's just a video picture that is being played. As an option for future cooperation with operators - this is their digital set-top box for digital television, on which you can play the same thing, connect a gamepad and that's it, please. Millions of devices are already at home with you, rolled software, turned on the gamepad, play. I hope our operators get to this. In Europe, there are such in Asia, too. As an option for future cooperation with operators - this is their digital set-top box for digital television, on which you can play the same thing, connect a gamepad and that's it, please. Millions of devices are already at home with you, rolled software, turned on the gamepad, play. I hope our operators get to this. In Europe, there are such in Asia, too. As an option for future cooperation with operators - this is their digital set-top box for digital television, on which you can play the same thing, connect a gamepad and that's it, please. Millions of devices are already at home with you, rolled software, turned on the gamepad, play. I hope our operators get to this. In Europe, there are such in Asia, too.



    The cornerstone of all this technology is delays at all stages of service. They appear - this is encoding, decoding, network, screen rendering. For example, the TV, who came in, saw in the menu: regular mod, movie mod, or gaming mod.
    Accordingly, gaming is the minimum delay noticeable even with the naked eye. Of course, I already have an eye on this topic, but I think it will also be noticeable to you, if you put two streams of two parallel streams of the same parallel, you will see the difference. A comfortable delay is about 100 milliseconds until the user clicks on the button and sees the reaction. 100 milliseconds is a comfortable delay for most types of games. Of course, for first-person shooters, everything is more complicated, here the delays are even minimal. If we talk about modern technology - it's VR, there should already be a few milliseconds. Because for a long time it’s so impossible, the brain is not used to it. We minimize direct channels for operators through channels, minimize technologies, try to install servers - again this is a difficult task and we solve it as much as we can.



    This is a business model of our service. In short, we share income with the copyright holders ... It was we who participated in the startup competition in Skolkovo, unfortunately, did not win. In our Nomination, Rubik's Cube won, which in the end then took 1st place. Subscription model: the user pays for a full month subscription. Now it is 590 rubles. and buys the key to the game. Unfortunately, the model is still only such a “key + subscription”, because the copyright holders are not ready to give their games only according to the “subscription” model, for now. Maybe when the volume is more everything will come to this. The subscription model in this segment is not developed yet. While they want to get a lot of money and still sell for 3 thousand. Key.



    Question from the audience: - Does the key come back later?

    Alexey Lykov:- No, the user always has the key, he buys it. This is a purchase. You can go to the competition, you can buy a computer home if you won the lottery and continue to play. Or go to a friend to play.
    The general business scheme is sharing resources that we put in a data center between all users. Instead of each user buying his own resources home. The concept of cloud is one, both for the office and in general.



    This is our statistics. We once realized that users only need hit games. They don’t play old boring games, they want new things. Moreover, new items - this is 95% for six months, 5% is junk. Everything else is not needed. This was our mistake initially, corrected and immediately saw the growth. We understood the value of our service for ourselves in the first place.

    I would not want more fairy tales about the project, more about cloud games. There are not many competitors in the world, the most famous is the GeForce Nvidia. They position themselves only on their devices. This is their feature. There are several companies that work only with operators in France, in Korea. Here we are one of the few who work in the b2c market, who have taken on such a task. Hope we can handle it. The problem is building the infrastructure. And most importantly, someone should invest in it. While we are trying to do it ourselves. Are there any questions about what I said?



    Question from the audience: - What disposal do you have now?

    Alexey Lykov: - Loading?

    Question from the audience: - Yes,

    Alexey Lykov:- So, we are currently renting a server in Amazon. That is, disposal is how?

    Question from the audience: - Technically, do you take resources in volume depending on the number of users at the moment? or do you take all the infrastructure from the start?

    Alexey Lykov: - No. A user connected, we launched one virtual machine, another user connected - another virtual machine, etc. If the user doesn’t use it, we turned off this virtual machine and don’t pay for it — that is, according to the Pay and Go model, there are options so far. I would also like to do, collaborate with someone. This virtual machine can be used by someone else: to generate Bitcoins.

    Question from the audience: - Do you have problems with downloading from a long distance?

    Alexey Lykov: - It arises.

    Question from the audience: - How do you decide?

    Alexey Lykov: - Users play - pay. This is an important indicator. At the same time, the pings are large, while up to Frankfurt 30-40 milliseconds., Approximately. But users are playing. And willing to pay for it. When we finally put the server in Moscow, it will be even less ping. I think there will be significant growth. The joy of customers will be unlimited.

    Question from the audience: - They play because the news?

    Alexey Lykov: - For two reasons. First of all, a novelty. The second - they do not have a good computer on which they could play. These are basic. In addition to this, there are other pluses, such as: no need to download the game; no need to wait for her; no need to have a hard drive, store it somewhere; all saves are stored in the cloud.

    Question from the audience: - And what is the advantage of not having to download the game?

    Alexey Lykov: - Plus? I tell you. Rightholders, they have statistics on how many users came to the site, registered, the client started to download and did not play. People just disappeared, i.e. they never even played and didn’t start the game after that. It is at that moment when you come home that you want to play this game right now. Now! Not tomorrow morning when the game is downloading, but now. At that moment, “Aha!”, Such a moment is in the marketing of “Aha!” Now I want to play! ”, And if you are being deceived, then you simply don’t go to play this game.

    Question from the audience: - That is, if I understood you correctly, I wanted to play, I immediately begin. And for what period can I start?

    Alexey Lykov: - 10 seconds. If there is a key, then 10 seconds. If there is no key, then depending on how long the purchase is, 1-2 minutes. If the game is completely keyless, then 10 seconds.

    Question from the audience: - What document is signed by the user?

    Alexey Lykov: - Offer. Public offer.

    Question from the audience: - What software?

    Alexey Lykov: - Soft client. 5 MB client to install, download and run. 10 seconds plus or minus.

    Question from the audience: - Tell me, how often do they come to play? Do you have statistics?

    Alexei Lykov: - There are statistics: when he entered, what he played and how much.

    Question from the audience:- What is the length of time until the moment the game leaves the “new” status?

    Alexey Lykov: - I guess I won’t tell you that. Those. it depends on the game. An interesting game is not interesting. On average, the Witcher plays a month. If we talk about GTA, then they play there, of course, longer, because you can play there for a long time. I honestly do not know these statistics.

    Question from the audience: - In the hope of a new user, are you holding some kind of pool?

    Alexey Lykov: - Yes, of course. At peak it’s more cars, less at night.

    Question from the audience: - What is the number of games that have already been installed and how many, if not secret?

    Alexey Lykov: - Let there be five hundred virtual machines.

    Question from the audience:- And what now does not suit Russian providers?

    Alexey Lykov: - The lack of servers with GPU accelerators. -What will your colleagues say?

    Question from the audience: - Are you not ready to invest in graphic cards, and then choose providers?

    Alexey Lykov: - Now we are actually doing this, but we must understand that the server is an expensive thing, and the investment is not endless.
    Question from the audience: - Do you invest in servers or cards?

    Alexey Lykov:- If there are server operators in which I can insert cards, it will be wonderful. But they have no cards, no servers. They don’t have such. I will explain why. Firstly, these are passively cooled cards. Secondly, there must be slots in PCI so that the card can be inserted, 2 or 3. That is, this is a different form of factor. To do this, you can leave the case itself, and you will have to pull out the rest and reinstall it.



    Alexei Khoroshilov (left), CEO, UltraVDS:

    - The case, compared to the cost of the server, costs two pennies, i.e. you can then invest in the cost of the card, which costs several hundred thousand rubles, and in the case itself.

    Alexey Lykov:- This is what happens, i.e. we invest in the server. We use diskless enclosures, everything on our storage system is stored, also in the direction of optimization. There should be three large video cards in the case, and two more processors, two 2800 W power supply units ... The question is rather, do you need to have your own equipment for this? Here on the power supply, by the way, yes an urgent issue. A standard server of 500 watts is coming ...

    Alexei Khoroshilov: - 1000 watts

    Alexei Lykov: - So it’s a good server after all, just with video cards, where one card is +300 watts, it’s three cards + 900 watts. Power supplies need to be changed there. No, I can’t imagine such a “hodgepodge”. Those. or the cloud provider has some servers, cases or processors that he does not need when he is ready to assemble them himself ...

    Alexei Khoroshilov:- I don’t quite understand, are you completely renting hardware or do you have something?

    Alexey Lykov: - Two models. We have our own servers and rented in Amazon. In Moscow - their own.

    Alexei Khoroshilov: - As I understand it, some customers are happy, and the rest ...

    Alexei Lykov: - Yes

    Alexei Khoroshilov: - And what about the ratio?

    Alexey Lykov: - While in Moscow 5-10%

    Alexei Khoroshilov: - Is this due to the lack of equipment?

    Alexey Lykov:- Yes. Now in Russia I am ready to work on any model. Except, how to buy it yourself. We are not such a big company, a startup with only an office and several servers behind it. Nobody gives us leasing yet. And it’s hard to get out of this vicious circle.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - In addition to delays, what else affects the quality of perception of your gaming service?

    Alexey Lykov: - Of course there are delays, the second is the resolution of the picture and bitrate, FPS.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - Apparently, the most delays?

    Alexey Lykov: - Yes, this should be given the most attention.

    Question from the audience: - How busy are the servers?

    Alexey Lykov:- At peak, of course not 100% loaded. Those. first we upload our own, then we rent. Of course there is a simple night.

    Question from the audience: - Do gamers usually play at night?

    Alexey Lykov: - If we talk about current statistics from 3 Moscow days to 3 nights - everything is busy.

    Question from the audience: - Maybe it makes sense to rent a server at night?

    Alexey Lykov:- Ready to provide AutoCAD. Someone needs to manage the servers. This is a completely different business. Those. we are not a hosting provider who wants to give their servers to others. We want to develop a service for cloud games, but we are ready to give them control to someone. Better yet, rent some from cloud providers. Cloud providers need to search for these auto-cads. We met and for three we would have realized something.

    Question from the audience: - Maybe there is a market for such services, programs that need similar virtual servers , VPS ?

    Alexey Lykov:- Look, several of our Russian providers, who are launching these services together with MVideo in the pilot, are announcing, but they simply are not loaded with them. Why is that? I understand. My wife works at the plant, she is an engineer, she uses similar programs. They have one license for the entire plant, an expensive program that costs on one computer, and they count on it. What kind of cloud can we talk about, a conditionally shovel plant, which is simply not ready to switch to these clouds. Further, probably, the question will go to some state-owned companies that are also not ready to go into the cloud. Or some Lukoil, which will build a private cloud, with GPU servers, either. Those. this is true for freelancers, engineers who are doing something serious, possibly for rendering 3D, 3Dmax. But this is such a narrow market compared to games.

    Question from the audience: - Maybe go to the management of your wife’s factory and offer them the use of servers?

    Alexey Lykov: - I do not know how this all happens at the plant, I'm afraid it's all such a bureaucratic machine. I can’t say it now. I did not communicate personally with their leader, but in fact this is not the case. If it is possible to change, maybe cloud providers? I just do not want to do this, i.e. this is wrong from my point of view. I want to create a server for end users - a game. And cloud providers must create an infrastructure for us, which, unfortunately, does not exist.

    Question from the audience: - Ie are you ready to go

    Alexey Lykov: -Ready. Any resources in Russia will be generally wonderful, in any form.

    Evgeny Shagalov:- But in terms of the performance of your physical servers, for example, on one, how many games can you launch, play at the same time. Let’s say the latest innovations, the most hit, the most resource-intensive?

    Alexey Lykov: - If the top games, we are launching them now at 8. If we talk about non-top games, then up to 24 games.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - Do customers always choose the maximum settings? or are you somehow limiting them?

    Alexey Lykov: - In some games, we limit these resources, we just allocate less resources for this game.
    But they certainly want the maximum. This situation occurs when we give them the opportunity to change the settings, the game works worse. They can put up, FPS drops. This is equivalent to your home computer. If the computer does not pull, it makes no sense to set the maximum settings.

    Alexei Khoroshilov: - What is the point of leaving to you if, again, there are no maximum settings?

    Alexey Lykov: - This is a consumption model, in addition there are other advantages. There is also a video stream. It must be understood that in itself it makes losses in the picture, i.e. this is lossy coding. Someone is finicky, someone is not. Those. if you have a powerful computer at your place for 60 thousand.

    Question from the audience: - And how long do you exist?

    Alexey Lykov:- We are engaged in development for 3.5 years, in the public domain for 1.5 years.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - Do you only work in Russia?

    Alexey Lykov: - We have both the English version of the site and the currency we accept, but we only officially work in Russia this way. But in Europe you can play. Server then in Europe on Amazon will play well.

    Question from the audience: - And on average, can you say the client’s life time?

    Alexey Lykov: - Now, about three months.

    Question from the audience: - Are they coming back?

    Alexey Lykov: - This is the average Life Time, I won’t say anything about the return. The average subscription lifetime is 3 months. I really hope that with a decrease in delays and the installation of servers in Russia, Life Time will increase.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - And how did you come up with the idea of ​​creating such a service in Russia? and why?

    Alexey Lykov: - There was such a wonderful Game Kike company that developed this technology and it was bought by Sony for $ 380 million. And we decided to do such a thing. In fact, the company had such a thing, they did two things: they sold digital content, contracts were concluded with copyright holders, they sold keys, they were the largest distributor in Russia, apart from Steam, and we worked with operators. Before that, our entire company worked in telecom, then we went out and began to create digital content stores for operators. And at such a junction of competencies of operators and games, we started this technology. And the need to change digital distribution.

    Question from the audience:- Do you have any portrait of your target client? Which clients are you targeting?

    Alexey Lykov: - Initially, we thought that we would have only schoolchildren, but, unfortunately, they turned out to be less solvent. On VK, of course, most of all they write, resent, swear and rejoice. So far this portrait is a young man aged 14 to 30 who does not have money for a powerful computer, but he is ready to save 100 rubles from lunch to buy our “one-day” tariff. There is a trial period, but it is not big 15 min. One of the advantages is that you can play the game, just try and see how it works. Unfortunately, before the demo versions were released, now this is not and for paid games you still need to buy a key.

    Question from the audience:- Limit 15 min. game developers set?

    Alexey Lykov: - No, this is our limitation.

    Question from the audience: - For most of the games that come out, probably there is some data or not?

    Alexey Lykov: - Very few. Doom was a bit. Now for some reason they do not do reviews. They take beautiful vidos ...

    Question from the audience: - Do you play yourself?

    Alexey Lykov: - I myself play a little, so, in the service I test.

    Question from the audience: - Which cards do you prefer from the point of view of IT? Why?

    Alexey Lykov: - On the cards. The question is open ...

    Evgeny Shagalov: - By model? which fits best?

    Alexey Lykov:- Any cards that are available will do. Nvidia cards we use. If we talk about desktop cards of the GTX series, they are cheap, but they do not have a 1-year warranty, the server platform does not support them. And I don’t know if the cloud provider will set them up a server with such cards or not? Someone must take the risk if the cards do not work stably. Therefore, only the Nvidia Tesla M60 cards remain, there is also the M6 ​​(but no one uses them at all) and the M10 will come out. There is still an old series of 520s cards that we use on Amazon.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - Why exactly Nvidia cards, do ATI, Radeon have analogues?

    Alexey Lykov:- At the moment there are no analogues. In fact, Nvidia has the so-called NVidia Key, which allows you to capture an image and encode it on a graphics accelerator, all in one memory, which reduces delays for the end user.

    Alexei Khoroshilov: - Have you tried to install something yourself?

    Alexei Lykov: - They are, but when we sorted them out, something worked unstably there. We did not begin to use them. No longer explored.

    Alexei Khoroshilov: - Which modules have you tried?

    Alexey Lykov:- Of sdk there was one, I don’t remember which one specifically, I can’t say right now. I know that they recently released powerful cards similar to the M60, one to one, but we did not use them. We cannot yet have time for research, until we have studied this question.

    Question from the audience: What was the main time spent, what did you do?

    Alexey Lykov:- This is the development of a client application, this is the development of the entire infrastructure in the management of virtual machines. All billing. Website. Reporting And the most important part is the interaction with the games. Those. this is control capture, storage of user profiles, processing sound from the game and sending it all to the client. Client-server application. It takes a lot of time to adapt all the games. The game comes to us - it is a black box that works. And we are processing it in such an isolated environment on a virtual machine. A certain black box, at the input we give control, at the output we take video and sound. All this is sent to the client.

    Question from the audience: - What about the contracts, is there any one copyright holder under the contracts?

    Alexey Lykov:- For games, no. There is nothing like this, as long as it is all individually agreed. This is a separate contract for Cloud Gamer. A separate type of distribution for which you need to sign an agreement and get permission in a specific country, for a specific copyright holder. This path has been passed. Not with all copyright holders, some are not yet ready to sign agreements, such as Electronic Arts, has not yet made contact in this matter. But they themselves want a cloud service. Maybe they themselves are developing? There is no such information yet. There are no standard agreements, public offers - no.

    Evgeny Shagalov:- Look here also in numbers: how much your channel gets clogged up when you give video to customers? how large is the stock, how many customers can work at the same time? Have you reached the peaks? What happened to the application in this case? Somehow tested? Estimated how much is required? Are the settings automatically adjusted?

    Alexey Lykov: - If the channel is narrow or losses occur for some reason, then we lower the bitrate and the helmet to 3 megabits. The picture is getting worse and worse. If the channel is wide, then we respectively give it up to 10 - 15 Mbit.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - What is the bandwidth of your service?

    Alexey Lykov:- We have a starting 8 Mbps, this is the starting point. We set the bitrate and the picture starts from it, it goes from the server to the client. There are, of course, nuances, on very old computers there is no hardware decoder. Therefore, it decodes software there, a large bitrate, more than 8 Mbps is simply not chewed. The processor does not cope. If the user has something else running on the computer, God forbid any viruses, they will throw the processor and it’s all bad. We have to work with users, repeatedly, connect to their desktop and watch what they have ..: disable it.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - I.e. you are with the client, he says that he is running, and you advise him what to disconnect.

    Alexey Lykov:- Diagnostic procedure: the client launches at home, the support looks, if there are problems anyway, then we connect. But it still works on a small scale. At such a stage that we are ready to do so far.

    Question from the audience: - Do you use Timviewer?

    Alexey Lykov: - For non-commercial use.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - That is, you do not provide user access directly to the servers? It can only from the client the necessary files, save, or how?

    Alexey Lykov:- Yes, there are two types of services on the market right now. The first is that we only provide the game and nothing more. The second is when you rent a computer on which you can already put the game, you can enter the key in the same way and play. We still believe in our theory, because what I saw on a computer rental is terrible. In terms of usability, the start of the game, control. You have to control the disk, you have to download the game, somehow connect there. The whole process is very complicated. Somewhere else there is an hourly pay, for an hour you take a computer and play. It seems to me uncomfortable. Plus, the savings come from running only games.

    Evgeny Shagalov:- Another question regarding the development phase, which is associated with the management of virtual machines. Can you tell us what functionality you have implemented? What hypervisors do you support? what are you working with?

    Alexey Lykov: - We work with Xen and VMware at the virtual machine level, we just launch them. Amazon has an API that runs them. We ourselves launch the VPS virtual computer in the same way , i.e. our servers are constantly spinning, not turning off. In Amazon, we launch them by API. There, it doesn’t matter to us what virtualization will be, the main thing is that the resources are there.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - Maybe one of the providers wants to tell if there are customers who would like to rent resources with graphics accelerators? How often are they treated? How relevant is this?

    Alexey Lykov:- The question is relevant. The number of calls is not very large, somewhere around a week and not all of them are related to games. This is still some kind of work on the server, AutoCAD, etc. As for the implementation, the server graphics card in our new RDS will appear closer to winter and, in principle, and in principle, they can also be created. However, analytics, we do not have exactly B2B, which is required for you, as a customer for such processors. The ratio of video power to processor power. To say that tomorrow we can provide some kind of service for this is quite difficult. Because he will be released, it will be something new and the business itself will say what he needs when he sees such a thing.
    As for the video memory, probably a question for you? As far as I know, in VMware does not give more than 2 GB to the virtual machine.

    Alexey Lykov:- Gives. Up to 16 GB. In VMware and Nvidia in conjunction, there are two technologies that are forwarding the whole device. If we talk about VGPU cards, then you can drop profiles from 512 MB to 16 GB to a virtual machine. Maybe not up to 16, but up to 8 GB. I could be wrong.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - Do you use more VGPU at your place?

    Alexey Lykov: - No. We use CSP. VGPU imposes additional licensing restrictions.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - Maximum, how much volume do you allocate?

    Alexey Lykov: - 4 GB.

    Alexei Khoroshilov: - This, for what games?

    Alexey Lykov: - GTA V, The Witcher.

    Evgeny Shagalov:- You said you install three video cards? Do you somehow connect them in a special way?

    Alexey Lykov: - Not in SLI mode, just usually three devices. There are, of course, servers and 8 graphics cards can be thrust, but here we have the ratio of processors and video cards about 2-3 cards per server, if we talk about Teslo cards.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - What processors are used in your servers?

    Alexey Lykov: - 2690.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - And for how long does the game start after its release?

    Alexey Lykov:- So, at least, for what we would do, it took us 6 days to get the game, to check everything, some improvements may be needed, we tested everything, poured it and we got it. 2 months maximum. There is such a chance that it is not advisable to connect the game at all.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - With whom is the contract for the game concluded? With a vendor? The copyright holder?

    Alexey Lykov: - The contract is concluded with the copyright holder. He gets his money, we sell the key.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - Do games run only on PS platforms? or do you provide remotely and console? Console games?

    Alexey Lykov:- No, we only have a PS platform. Client devices can also be Mac OS. There are exclusives for X Boxing, but, unfortunately, we won’t do anything with them. Those. These exclusives go only on X-Box. If someone provides, maybe we will. But there is no such thing. For example, Sony they also have a streaming service, they stream PS3 games to PS4. They go, dry, that they have PS3 stacks in their data center, with which they stream using such technology. I don’t know how it works for sure. Here you need to understand that to rewrite the old game under the new platform, nobody needs it.

    Evgeny Shagalov:- How often did you encounter such a problem that, for example, a client visits your site, sees beautiful pictures, there GTA, any games, pays 600 rubles, and then it turns out that he still needs to buy a key and then there is some kind of conflict , like you deceived me, return my money?

    Alexey Lykov: - Of course, we try to convey this to the user as we can, but yes, there are refunds for this reason, i.e. we generally wrote that within 7 days, you can return the money.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - Is it written somewhere?

    Alexey Lykov: - When subscribing, yes, just when subscribing there are games to which you need to buy a key, and there are to which you do not. So here ... Actually, to be honest, I don’t remember exactly how it is written there.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - And why does it depend, if not necessary?

    Alexey Lykov: - What does it depend on? From the game itself and the copyright holder. For the new games, the copyright holder is not ready to give games only as a subscription, because he wants to get money from him, and he can no longer monetize old games, no one plays them, and there we share the cost of the subscription with the copyright holders.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - Is the price fixed?

    Alexey Lykov: - The price is fixed, i.e. play as you want.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - Share with us plans for promoting the service in general in Russia, and perhaps you plan to enter some new markets, add some new features, I don’t know, in your service?

    Alexey Lykov:- There is such a disaster with promotion that it makes no sense to promote now. Because now we simply will not satisfy users, we do not have the capacity to satisfy users, i.e. start some kind of video there, users will already come. The video was very cool for the New Year, it shot at 800 thousand views, it was given to some comrade, it recorded some terrible video, it’s called, if you google “weak games on the calculator”, it shot straight, it hit a lot of users that some could not play.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - At the moment, I understand correctly that demand exceeds supply?

    Alexey Lykov: - Demand exceeds supply, yes.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - So it turns out your proposal can not digest Amazon or what?

    Alexei Lykov: - On Amazon, too, there are limits, unfortunately.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - The limit on your account?

    Alexey Lykov: - No, the limits of physical servers in the data center. They do not officially disclose them, but when you catch the error that influence capacity, you call them, of course, say - let's put the server.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - That is, this is due precisely to the fact that they are restricting resources to a particular company?

    Alexey Lykov: - No.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - Or, in general, in principle, do they have everything there?

    Alexey Lykov: - In principle. There are simply no physical servers, not enough. They have 1000 servers there.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - Like Amazon, I don’t know ...

    Alexey Lykov: - But these are game servers.

    Evgeny Shagalov: - Yes, on the other hand ... Yes, their share is too large ...

    Alexei Lykov: - We have a whole Russia, 5 servers on all.

    Alexei Khoroshilov: - Based on what you described, it is quite difficult to make expediency, because 590 rubles are the cost of the subscription and 8 ... how many people can work on this server at the same time, provided that this server itself can cost about 2 million. rub.

    Alexei Khoroshilov - Well, let's say.

    Alexey Lykov: The user does not constantly play, i.e. this is the division of resources between users, this is the ratio of peak to paying users. The economy of real data can, of course, be watched individually.

    Alexei Khoroshilov: - I don’t know, what is your model of iron repulsion? For a year, for 3 years?

    Alexey Lykov: - Three years.

    Alexei Khoroshilov: - Three years? It is necessary to collect money as much as the equipment costs.

    Alexey Lykov: - We are laying for three years. Well, we believe that the equipment goes to zero in three years, we have developed such a model for ourselves.

    Alexei Khoroshilov: - How would a model raise money, how much does it cost for three years? Or raise money, pay for yourself, an office for three years? Well, roughly speaking, are you going to get customers for 3 years just the same 2 million, or 2 million, plus the cost of infrastructure?

    Alexey Lykov: - 2 million plus the cost of infrastructure.
    That is, we are ready to rent a server, pay per month, but have our own margin, then you can not take three years.

    Alexey Lykov: - The realities of the Russian hosting market consist of leasing, leasing such expensive equipment, the price is about one. If you have an overabundance of customers and the model is working, then I don’t understand why not risking my own funds to purchase equipment.

    Alexei Khoroshilov: - Own funds? What own means?

    Alexey Lykov:Here ... That is, a startup company, we are looking for investors, I, unfortunately, do not have my own funds. The whole model of startups, here is a classic startup that we are looking for investments and making money, but who, in principle, need a lot of money for iron, and investors invest mainly in iron. If there is one of the investors, individually you can talk about this issue.




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