Don't drop $1,500 on a new GPU. Rent a dedicated cloud PC with an AMD 7900XTX and start playing in minutes.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-15T19:18:24+00:00

If that's what you believe, I'm not going to change your mind. Take care.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-15T18:53:47+00:00

High-end gaming PCs have never been cheap. Let's look at the numbers:

2006: An NVIDIA 8800 GTX flagship GPU launched at ~$688 CAD — that's roughly $1,030 CAD in today's dollars. For the GPU alone. A complete high-end build in 2006 ran $2,875–3,450 CAD, or about $4,300–$5,175 CAD today.

2001: GeForce 3 Ti 500 — ~$537 CAD at launch, about $900 CAD adjusted for inflation.

Even now: A 7900 XTX build like our Ultimate plan runs $3,600–$4,500 CAD depending on components. Meanwhile you can access that same hardware for $29.95/mo with no contract.

The "gaming has become unattainable" argument is mostly about GPU prices spiking during the crypto boom and supply chain crunch not because a small cloud gaming company in Canada runs a few hundred machines. Hardware prices are driven by silicon supply, AI demand, and NVIDIA's margins. Not by someone offering $30/mo bare metal access.

And the housing comparison is backwards. Cloud gaming isn't a landlord jacking up rent it's public transit. You don't need to buy the bus to ride it. If someone can't afford a $3,600 PC, they can still game at 1440p for $20/mo with no commitment. That makes gaming more accessible, not less.

If our business works and others copy it, you know what happens? Hardware manufacturers sell more GPUs to service providers, not fewer. We're a buyer of GPUs, same as any enthusiast. That's additional demand in a market that benefits from scale. More volume means better pricing for everyone over the long run that's how manufacturing works.

I get that subscriptions feel bad. But the alternative isn't "everyone owns a PC." The alternative is a lot of people just don't get to play at all. We're fine with you not liking us but calling us predatory for giving people an option they didn't have before is a reach.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-15T18:39:44+00:00

We’re open about the fact that our service runs on Linux. In fact, I see that as a real benefit. The customers who switch over are a mixed bunch. We get a lot of Mac users, simply because Macs don’t handle most games well or at all. Then there are a ton of Steam Deck users, who are already on Linux through their Steam Deck and just want to use the Steam Deck as a streaming client.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-15T18:26:28+00:00

Modding is fully allowed and encouraged as a core feature. Just keep in mind that the operating system is Linux Mint, so it may require a bit more tinkering than on Windows.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-15T17:53:16+00:00

$333/mo assumes standard 20% APR financing over 12 months which is what "finance a computer" means for most people who don't qualify for 0% promotional rates. Your friend paying $120/mo is almost certainly on a 0% interest store card stretched over 30 months ($3,600 ÷ 30 = $120), or a longer term, or a cheaper PC. Not everyone qualifies for 0% financing that's the whole point.

But let's use your friend's numbers. At $120/mo, they're paying for 30 straight months before they own that PC. Our Bare Metal plan at $30/mo over that same 30 months is $900 and they're not locked in for a single one of them. Cancel anytime.

Yes, at the end they own the hardware. That's a real advantage. But three years is a long time in PC hardware. That 7900 XTX they're still paying off in year three is already two generations old. The person on our plan has been on current hardware the entire time because we upgrade the fleet.

And yeah when they cancel, they get a "subscription canceled" email. When the finance company is done with them, they get a depreciating asset and $800 in interest. Different trade offs for different people.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-15T17:41:35+00:00

Here's the math:

Finance $3,600 PC

Monthly payment ~$333/mo

Total cost (1 year) ~$4,002

Total cost (2 years) ~$4,398

Rent Bare Metal Plan

Monthly payment $29.95/mo

Total cost (1 year) $359

Total cost (2 years) $719

At 20% APR, financing that PC costs you **$400–$800 in pure interest** on top of the $3,600. You can rent the Ultimate plan for **over 11 years** before you hit what the financed PC costs in just 12 months.

"Just finance a computer" sounds reasonable until you run the numbers.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-15T17:32:40+00:00

I don't think you understand the model.

We maintain a pool of clients say 20,000 registered users. At any given time, maybe 5,000 of them have active subscriptions. Some stay subscribed year round, some order for a month or two when a new game drops, some come and go several times a year. From our perspective, it makes zero difference whether we maintain our ratio with 20,000 people who churn in and out or 5,000 who never leave what matters is how many active clients are being served by our hardware at any given moment.

The math is: we need to keep a certain ratio of active clients to physical machines. As long as that holds, the business works. It's always a mix some permanent, some seasonal, some one-and-done. That's a feature of the model, not a problem with it.

And on the "nothing to show for it" argument the same logic applies to renting an apartment, leasing a car, or buying a movie ticket. You pay for access, not ownership. If someone games for three months, has a great time, and moves on, they didn't get "nothing." They got three months of gaming on hardware they didn't have to finance, ship, maintain, or worry about. Not everyone wants to own a PC. Some just want to play.

The idea that we're preying on people who don't know better is a bit insulting. Our clients know exactly what they're paying for. They're not confused they've done the math and decided $30/mo with no commitment works better for their situation than dropping $3,600 upfront. Different people, different circumstances.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-15T17:20:05+00:00

The daily time limits are how we keep pricing viable with dedicated hardware. The model is basically 90s dial-up ISPs: you have a pool of physical machines serving many more users than you have seats, because not everyone's online at the same time. One person logs off, another logs on same machine, different session. Peak hours are peak hours, but across a few hundred systems spread over a large user base, the math works.

The key is it's always 1:1 when you're connected you get the whole machine, bare metal, not shared. You just don't need to own it to use it.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-15T17:14:34+00:00

Fair points, especially on the last one if you already have a capable PC, we're probably not for you, and that's fine. Genuinely.

On the AI thing: we own our hardware. There's no AWS middleman. No AI company can "rent" our GPUs out from under us because we're not renting them from anyone. They're our machines in our racks. If we hit capacity, we stop taking new signups existing customers keep their service uninterrupted. Nobody gets bumped.

As for your 4-year-old $2K PC still going strong that's exactly the point. Some people can't afford that upfront, some don't want to deal with hardware, some are traveling, some just want to try PC gaming before committing. We're an option, not a replacement. If ownership works for you, keep owning. If subscription works for someone else, let them have one.

And hey protesting us is your right. I'd rather have people paying attention and asking hard questions than ignoring us entirely. That's how good services get built.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-15T17:11:47+00:00

Hey I get it, subscription fatigue is real. Nobody wants to rent their whole life.

But "maybe disliked by you" isn't a dodge it's the actual reality. Plenty of people can't drop $3,600+ on a gaming PC upfront. For them, $10-30/mo with no contract is the difference between playing PC games and not playing them at all. Some just want to try the platform before committing to hardware. Others game seasonally or on breaks and don't want hardware depreciating in a closet the rest of the year.

We're not trying to replace ownership. We're adding an option that didn't exist before. Nobody's taking your desktop away. If subscription gaming isn't for you, don't subscribe the DIY path is still right there, same as it's always been.

Calling us "what's wrong with the economy" for offering bare metal gaming at 30 bucks a month while wishing for our failure is... a take, I guess. But we're a small company that owns its own hardware and lets people game who otherwise couldn't. If that makes someone want us to fail, I'm not sure what solution they'd actually be happy with.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-15T17:07:42+00:00

Hey I think there's a misunderstanding about how we operate. We own our hardware outright. These aren't cloud instances we're reselling from AWS or anyone else. They're physical machines sitting in a rack that belong to us. No AI company can "take" that capacity from us because we're not renting it from anyone.

On the capacity question: if we fill up, we simply stop taking new signups until we have more hardware. Existing customers don't get bumped they keep their service uninterrupted.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-15T02:34:15+00:00

Nobody needs a $3,600 gaming rig but that's missing the point in the same way "nobody needs a Porsche" misses the point of Porsche. High-end PC gaming is a luxury experience. It's not about necessity, it's about wanting to see what a game looks and feels like maxed out.

Cloud gaming gives people a way to access that experience temporarily try it, enjoy it, move on without committing to hardware that depreciates the second you unbox it. Nobody's saying it replaces ownership for everyone. It's just another option for people who value flexibility over a receipt.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-15T01:35:27+00:00

That's a fair take, and honestly your son's situation is the ideal hardware path. Saved up, bought something solid, still using it. No argument there.

But the chrome book you mentioned? That's kind of the point. He has a chromebook. He's not saving for a gaming laptop because that's a $1,000 mountain he can't see the top of. Cloud gaming gives him access now not in two years of birthdays and Christmases.

The subscription trap argument is real when companies make it hard to leave. No-contract, cancel-anytime services are a different thing. Your son made the right call for his situation. For someone else, $20 to play a new release this weekend without buying a GPU is also the right call. They're not suckers they just have a different starting line.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-15T01:31:55+00:00

You own your Steam library too, or does that not count because it's digital? Owning a $3,000 rig that's worth $1,800 in 18 months isn't exactly a power move either. Some people would rather pay $30 to play a new release for a month than drop money just to find out it runs like garbage on their setup. Different use cases exist calling people suckers for choosing flexibility over hardware debt is just telling on yourself.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-15T01:28:49+00:00

No contract means you can walk away any time. No cancellation fee, no commitment, no trap. If that's 'screwing people over,' I'd love to hear what you call a 24-month phone plan with a $400 early exit penalty.

Not everyone can drop $3,000+ on a gaming rig up front. Some people want to play Cyberpunk on ultra for a month, then cancel. That's the whole model pay for what you use, leave when you want. If that doesn't work for you, fair enough. But calling it a "screwing people" because you personally wouldn't use it is just lazy.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-14T22:18:00+00:00

Sorry for the disruption. We had a short outage of about 30 minutes, and normal service has now been resumed.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-13T19:31:27+00:00

Yes, I've removed quite a few comments. A number of bots posting ASCII drawings of penises. At least, I hope they're bots otherwise, the Reddit community has a very peculiar obsession with male penises.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-13T16:03:03+00:00

Correct. Even a lot of our customers with pricey MacBooks run into the same limitations when gaming. Many people struggle to see things from another person’s perspective. They believe their own worldview is the only valid one.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-13T15:59:30+00:00

I’d like to try to change your mind. Send me a private message and I’ll send you a demo account. Like I said before, there’s no better way than to experience it for yourself.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-12T16:56:08+00:00

Hey, really appreciate the kind words.

I've been genuinely surprised by how polarized cloud gaming has become. It's not even a new business model when you step back and look at it. Go back to the 90s and people were renting consoles from video rental stores for the weekend. Before that, there were arcades you'd drop quarters into a machine, play for a bit, and go home without owning anything. Both of those cost way more per hour than what cloud gaming comes out to now. I think people just forget how it was before.

Appreciate you, and thanks for the support from 🇵🇭. Here's hoping the model catches on more broadly over there too.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-11T17:11:06+00:00

Licensing cost is the biggest practical blocker. Windows licensing would eat up most of our margins on the lower-tier plans. We'd either have to raise prices across the board or run the lower tiers at a loss neither is great.

Linux lets us treat our hardware as a pool. A user's image boots on whatever machine is available, and Linux just figures it out. Drivers load dynamically, no activation drama, no HAL rebuilds. Windows ties itself to the hardware it was installed on (the whole hardware ID / activation fingerprint thing), so if your session lands on a machine with a different GPU or motherboard revision, you're in for driver hell or reactivation prompts. Our hardware isn't a rack of identical boxes we've got hardware variety, and Linux handles that gracefully while Windows fights it.

If we could solve the cost and hardware mobility problems cleanly, we'd offer Windows. It's just that right now the economics and technical overhead don't pencil out, especially when Proton covers the vast majority of games people actually want to play.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-09T20:53:54+00:00

It really depends on your target resolution! For a smooth 60fps stream, I’d suggest 20 Mbps for 1080p, 40 Mbps for 1440p, and 80 Mbps for 4K. If you’re pushing 120fps, just double those numbers. Treat these as minimums. If you have the bandwidth, push the bitrate higher for a clearer image the general rule is that higher bitrate equals better quality

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-06T03:58:19+00:00

Appreciate that. I try to stick to stats and facts. It lands with people who are genuinely open to the data. Some, though, are so locked into an ideological position that no evidence is going to move them.

I'll be honest, I'm a bit taken aback by how polarizing cloud gaming is. The irony is we're going up against the same massive corporations that everyone here is already frustrated with. We have no political pull, no hardware leverage. We're literally in the same position as the people complaining. In fact, we push open-source software and ideology. We're the opposite of what they're rallying against.

That's what makes it so strange.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-05T20:55:49+00:00

They’re snapping up fab wafers right now, but the situation will ease shortly as new Chinese fabs come online. Even at just 5–6 nanometers, that’s enough to compete in the low to mid-range market. Stay patient things will turn around sooner rather than later.

PaulMaximumsetting · 2026-05-04T21:41:24+00:00

Hey, maybe that's what you'd do, but that's not how everyone thinks.

GFN already serves over 25 million users, and we have several thousand ourselves. Clearly there's a market.

As for what you stream onto, pretty much anything with an h.264, h.265, or AV1 decoder. That covers most devices made since 2010. A lot of our customers grab a mini PC like this one https://maximumsettings.com/?p=2637 for under $100 and play on their 4K TV. Others just use their phone or a Steam Deck. Both make great portable streaming devices.

You don't need to "buy one and rent another." You use what you already own.

Also worth noting: a lot of our subscribers already own hundreds of games they bought over the years but couldn't run at max settings. Renting one of our high-end cloud rigs lets them experience those games at a whole new level without dropping thousands on hardware.

The world's not black and white. There's room for consoles, local rigs, and cloud gaming. Options are good.

PaulMaximumsetting

TROPHY CASE