Run your own high-end cloud gaming service on EC2

[joblessjunkie]

I might not mind if Valve just made all the games available this way. No download, no waiting: a button in the Steam client starts streaming the game immediately.

[pjc50]

OnLive tried to do this and went bankrupt recently, IIRC.

[drummer32]

I think they already do. You begin the download and after it has downloaded some portion of the game you can launch it and the stream the rest.

[xedarius]

Biggest win I see is you could even be rid of the steam client.

[chii]

would you pay $2-$3/hour for such a service from steam?

[kpcyrd]

It's kinda weird how hackers are pioneering the technology that's going to be the DRM of the next decade.

[GFK_of_xmaspast]

Computer people aren't known for doing things that are in their long-term self interest.

[sciencerobot]

This looks hard. Somebody should automate this and charge me a few bucks for it ;)

[SomeCallMeTim]

Like, umm, Amazon's AppStream? [1] There's a process that involves, approximately, running an installer on a virtual Windows desktop, after which you can stream an app to a Windows or Mac desktop or laptop. Or to a Chromebook (!!). You can even stream to an Android or iOS device, but without a physical keyboard or mouse you can't DO much with apps. [2]

And considering how much work we've done to cut down on latency, I wouldn't expect the Steam streaming app running over a generic VPN connection to even come close in performance -- the VPN is almost certainly going to run over TCP, while AppStream will run over UDP, meaning in any but the best network environments AppStream will clobber a VPN connection for latency.

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/appstream/

[2] Disclaimer: I work on AppStream for Amazon, but my opinions are my own and don't represent Amazon. I'm just commenting as someone who has a lot of experience playing with the product.

[rangitatanz]

Yeah for sure. 1900 hrs? I wouldn't do 100 in a calendar year so this would be a way better option for me than having to constantly upgrade to keep ahead of new boxes. (well constantly == every other year).

[Icer5k]

It's not quite the same thing, but X.IO [1] from OTOY does a lot of the things mentioned, and can even run Steam directly without having to use in-home streaming (and we can take advantage of things like NvFBC to cut down capture time).

Going that method you lose the price advantage you'd get with the spot market, but a lot of the underlying complexity is removed.

Disclosure: I work for OTOY

[1]: https://www.x.io

[torkalork]

It would be awesome if someone created an AMI after they finished those driver steps, at least. If I do it I'll be sure to post back here.

[Immortalin]

If I was to sell this as a SaaS type of thing, would I be infringing on any of Steam's TOS or anything?

[TorKlingberg]

I'm pretty sure thats Nvidia GRID. Also you don't have to pay for the games there, they are part of the subscription. You do need a local Nvidia GPU though.

[splitrocket]

Agreed.

[jzelinskie]

I wonder how this compares to nVidia's commercial GRID product[0]. They claimed latency up to 150ms from their recent announcements. I'm sure AWS can spike to worse than 20ms.

Either way, I still think adding latency will poorly effect certain types of games: online/twitchy ones predominately. It's cool how easy it is to set something like this up on AWS, though.

[0]: http://shield.nvidia.com/grid-game-streaming

[kondro]

I have never noticed latency spikes like that from Amazon through transit… especially not for anything as trivial as 10Mbps which even a Micro instance is capable of sustaining.

[cthalupa]

I believe GRID at least partially runs on AWS

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/3/8146065/nvidia-grid-1080p-g...

>which is backed by Nvidia Grid supercomputers worldwide and Amazon Web Services

[gabeio]

This would even be great if you have your own tower computer/high power computer and have an okay laptop... (even save on paying for EC2, with better ping!)

[Untit1ed]

Isn't that how Steam streaming is supposed to work out of the box?

[bicknergseng]

For this, check out Splashtop. I've been using it for years and it works great. They even have Win8 touch integrations so you can play Civ 5 touch, and an OS X client so you can use a Mac from a tablet or phone.

[pushrax]

Just recently set up my local headless Linux server with PCI passthrough and a Windows VM for streaming games over the LAN, works really well! A neat benefit is the ability to connect multiple graphics cards with multiple VMs and effectively run two gaming machines in one, at near native performance.

[schlarpc]

The OTOY AMIs do something similar to this. They use the GPU's onboard encoding as far as I know, but they don't stream through Steam - it goes through some custom HTML client.

https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=795808b...

(Disclosure: AWS employee)

[Icer5k]

It runs through a custom HTML/JS client over web sockets with a video codec designed to be decoded with low CPU overhead [1], or a native client [2] for better performance, especially with game streaming.

For anyone interested in the space, we also have https://x.io which wraps our streaming tech up with a bunch of other stuff to make running an app as easy as making an API call.

Disclosure: I work for OTOY

[1] http://aws.otoy.com

[2] http://cloud.otoy.com

[SomeCallMeTim]

Also: Look at Amazon's AppStream. It sets you up with Windows app streaming automatically.

(Disclosure: I work on AppStream at AWS.)

[catchmrbharath]

I am asking a tangential question here. Is there any service that can stream android games / apps?

[pjc50]

What on earth is the use case for this - using something that's only available on Android on a non-Android device?

[thom]

I can also confirm that Football Manager 2015 runs pretty well on a c4.8xlarge 36-core Xeon machine, for they eye-watering cost of about $1.65 an hour in Spot instance costs.

Always wondered if you could break even hosting leagues on there.

[shurcooL]

Wow, this is so incredibly cool. As a big fan of OnLive, I saw a lot of potential in the approach being used for making old school classic games available remotely, without you having to manage to keep them around locally.

It's really neat that you can do this yourself, and seeing the costs as low as they are is pretty encouraging too.

Nice job!

[yeukhon]

How about spot insance + EBS. Can your "EBS" not be terminated after spot instance is overbidded in this case?

[jhgg]

Yep. That's correct. EBS isn't terminated when your SPOT instance is.

[dailen]

How do you get the $0.11/hr rate as opposed to the spot rate?

[dailen]

Nevermind, found it :-P

[adamnemecek]

i'd be interested in seeing a screencapture of this.