Playkey, a Russian cloud gaming startup, has just attracted 160 million rubles (approximately $2.7 million at the current exchange rate) in equity funding from the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF, or FRII in Russian). The information was confirmed by Playkey’s PR manager Maria Trushnikova in an exchange with East-West Digital News.
Playkey’s technology allows users to play the latest video games on low-performance computers. The funding will help the startup expand services and servers to the United States, Western Europe, and Asia.
“To upgrade his computer or console, an average Russian user would need to pay from 50,000 to 90,000 rubles [roughly $800 and $1,500 respectively at the current exchange rate]. Meanwhile, our monthly subscription fee amounts to just 390 rubles [a little more than $6],” Playkey’s founder and CEO Egor Guriev explained earlier this year in an exchange with Russian business daily Kommersant.
Among the startup’s partners are such gaming corporations such as Bethesda, Capcom, Codemasters, Plug In Digital, Sega, and Ubisoft, notes TechCrunch.
Guriev claims that Playkey’s profits have increased 300% over the last year. The service attracts nearly 400,000 users monthly.
Playkey previously raised nearly $2.5 million, including $1.5 million earlier this year from Darz, a major German data center company.
