Despite the potential for the Blade Shadow rent-a-PC service to combat the current exclusionary pricing of consumer graphics cards, even gaming rigs up in the cloud aren’t safe from nefarious GPU-jacking cryptocurrency miners.
Fancy picking up one of the best PC controllers? Look no further.
Blade’s Shadow recently launched here in the UK, but it’s also available in France, Germany, and the US. The streaming platform is largely focused on offering games through the magic of the interwebs, but what you really get with Shadow is a fully-functional virtual machine in the cloud, free to utilise as you please – for gaming or otherwise.
The system offers a whole Nvidia GTX 1080 GPU – or potentially a Quadro card with equivalent power – to every user. But, even in its relative infancy, Blade have already had to combat some miners attempting to take advantage of their data centre-based GPUs for their own gain.
It makes sense fiscally for the miners. You pay the £27 – £40 a month – depending on the contract – and you mine for a whole month on someone else’s system, wearing out someone else’s components, and sucking up someone else’s electricity. All the while turning a nice little profit for yourself with the best mining venture you can find.
I’m not trying to give you any ideas, and I’m happy to say that Blade is well-aware of the potential use of his hardware. Wesley Snipes has already started to sniff out any and all mining activity on his systems and will deal out swift punishment (slicing them in half with a katana, perhaps?). It is against the Blade Shadow terms of service, after all.
At least for now, game streaming services seem somewhat safe refuge for gamers from the crypto-mania running rampant outside the castle walls.