The price of graphics cards has soared through the roof recently as eager cryptocurrency enthusiasts buy them up in order to run mining programs, but if you have managed to snag a powerful GPU, you have a new option for getting video games. Games from Space promises to provide users with many big-name titles for free, provided they’re willing to loan their GPU’s power.
“With a simple software we use the performance of graphics cards for complex computing tasks and pay the temporary loan of graphical processing power with pre-selected games,” Games from Space said in a press release. “The user is not restricted in the daily use of his computer. Even while working on the computer, streaming, or watching YouTube, the graphics card can run separately.”
Should you need your computer’s GPU for something else during this time, the program will automatically halt, so you shouldn’t see any decreased performance.
The time in which it takes you to earn a free game will depend on the GPU you have installed in your machine, but with a $500 nVidia GeForce 1070, you can expect to earn Rocket League in around nine days of processing time, with Fallout 4 taking about 11 days. Other games available through the program include Life is Strange, Batman: Arkham Knight, and Minecraft. You can even earn a month of World of Warcraft time by loaning out your GPU, though it will take nearly two weeks to do so.
The energy needed to have your GPU running for hours at a time will likely cause your electricity bill to soar through the roof, and it could stress your system more quickly than if you were using it normally.
We wrote last month about similar marketplace called Robot Cache, which offers blockchain-based tokens but operates a little differently. Through the service, you can choose to mine for cryptocurrency and purchase games from the marketplace, but it also allows for the reselling of digital games. These sales give developers and publishers a cut of the earnings, with a much smaller fee than Steam charges with every sale. Whether or not the two services can succeed — and offer true value to players — remains to be seen.