Cloud gaming is no less than a blessing for gamers who cannot afford high-end Pc for gaming especially playing games like Battlefield 2044 and CyberPunk 2077 which require a lot of machine and graphics power. But now with PlayKey the dream of playing these high-end titles on low-end machines has become a reality.
Playkey allows you to play any game that you own instantly with one click with minimum latency at any time and at any place.
Want to learn more?
Read on, then, to find out everything you need to know about PlayKey Cloud Gaming, pricing, features, and benefits.
What is Playkey?
PlayKey is a Russian-based cloud gaming platform that allows users to stream games they own in their game distributors’ accounts to their low-end Pc in real-time without the involvement of their actual hardware.
PlayKey has its main headquarters in Russia but they have servers placed in 4 different locations across Russia, Europe, Germany, and the Middle East, to provide cloud gameplay with the minimum latency to its users. PlayKey has cloud-based hardware that is powerful enough to run any game on maximum settings.
Playkey not only provides access to its huge catalog (including free and paid games) but also offers a “virtual machine” with 300 GB of storage which can be used to install any game you want from game distributors like steam, play, and epic games.
How does PlayKey work?
PlayKey mainly has two main portals one in Russia and one in Europe, so the people living in Russia need to visit Russian Portal and the people living in Europe will have to visit the European portal. (Keep in mind that for both servers the subscription will be separate, which means that you need to purchase a subscription for each one) Also, only the European Portal offers “virtual Pc’ not the Russian Portal.
The way PlayKey work is quite straightforward. PlayKey has very powerful servers (with top-notch hardware configurations) on which the game runs in real-time and streams on your Pc. That way your hardware isn’t directly involved but the thing that is the most involved and we can say it is the only requirement for cloud gaming after a subscription is a high-speed internet connection.
How to use PlayKey?
PlayKey is one the cloud gaming platforms that are very easy to use, as you do not need to set up your virtual machine. On Playkey all you need to do is simply, create playkey free account and buy an hourly/monthly subscription and select the game you want to play.
Download their official app (which bearly takes a few mbs on your Pc) sign in and start the game.
You might need to download the game, which won’t take much time as the internet Playkey provide is quite high speed.
PlayKey Android/IOS
Unfortunately, PlayKey Client is only available on Windows and Mac and has no application for android and ios devices so there is no way to access PlayKey cloud gaming on android and ios devices.
What is Playkey pricing?
Playkey offers both hourly and monthly subscription plans. Here’s a detail of their both hourly and monthly subscription plans:
Hourly Subscription
Playkey hourly plans start from $2 for 1 hour to a maximum of $100 for 100 hours of game time
Keep in mind that the time you bought will get expired after 2 months.
Monthly Subscription
Playkey also offers a monthly subscription plan, that costs $49 / month. This monthly subscription plan provides extra features like
- Unlimited Game Time for the whole month
- Access to 300+ games in the catalog
- You can download any game you own from any game store.
Payment Methods
PlayKey only accepts payments through credit cards from all around the world.
Availability
PlayKey has its main headquarter in Moscow, Russia. But they have servers placed in different locations in Russia, the Middle East, Europe, and Germany.
In Russia they have servers in Moscow, In the Middle East they have servers in Dubai, in Europe, they have servers in London and in Germany they have servers in Frankfurt.
So make sure their servers are close to your location before purchasing their subscription or hourly plan.
Because the closer the server is to your location, the lowest latency and the smooth experience of cloud gaming you’ll have.
Also Read: Review of airgpu cloud gaming
What internet connection is required for Playkey?
As we all know, the only requirement for cloud gaming on any platform, after their subscription is a high-speed internet connection.
Because the game is streamed and rendered in real-time on cloud servers and data is continuously transferred between cloud servers and your device.
In short, the Internet is the only thing that can make your experience of cloud gaming buttery smooth or an absolute nightmare.
PlayKey recommends a 50mbps internet connection of DSL, Wifi, and landline. But if you have an internet connection of 10mbps to 20mbps, you can still be able to play games on the cloud.
For experiencing the best performance with minimum latency the recommendation is to have a 5G connection or an Ethernet connection (which is always faster than Wifi).
Games
PlayKey has a whole catalog of games, the catalog includes all the latest and popular games which you can only play if you own these games in game distributors’ accounts like Steam, Epic Games, Ubisoft, and Battle.net accounts.
There are some free games however like Fortnite, Counterstrike, Dota 2, PES 2020, and many others as well.
If you couldn’t find the game you want to play, simply open steam or any other gamer store app and download it.
One benefit of Cloud Gaming on PlayKey is, once you downloaded a game. It will then stay in your account as long as you have your subscription. Which means you don’t need to download the same game again.
Activation of Game Keys
On Playkey, in order to play games you need to activate the game key on the distributor platform where you’ve purchased the game including Steam, Ubisoft, Rockstar Games, et cetera.
If you haven’t activated the game key from the following distributor, you’ll get a form appearing on your screen, when you launch a game notifying you to enter the “activated key” of the game.
If you do not know how to activate game keys on these game distributor accounts, check the following articles for each game distribution platform;
Right now, you can only activate your Uplay keys on PlayKey.
How to Refund money on PlayKey?
You can only refund money on PlayKey cloud gaming if you face a certain issue or problem. Like if you find Playkey failed to release the game on schedule or you didn’t get your product key within 48 hours.
You can request a refund, by contacting PlayKey at [email protected]
You must need to provide details of your payment and the issue that you’re facing,
To read more about PlayKey’s refund policy check this official document.
Is PlayKey worth it?
Playkey could prove a very solid alternative to the traditional Pc and console gaming, as it makes us able to play any game without having to buy hardware that cost a lot of money. Of course, there are some barriers to entry like purchasing their subscription and owning a game in a game distributor account.
Overall the stream quality and frames that PlayKey provides while playing a game especially make it worth purchasing in a year like 2023, where hardware is so expensive, spending a few bucks on the hourly subscription of Playkey wouldn’t prove bad investment at all.
Like everything has pros and cons, Playkey also has some cons like there aren’t many servers located in different locations like other cloud gaming services, which might prove a cause of low latency for many users that are far away from server locations.
But you should give PlayKey a try by costing $2 for 1 hour, see if it is working for you and you’re getting low ping
Sign up on PlayKey today.
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
Can I have more storage on PlayKey?
No, on PlayKey virtual machine you are given a fixed 300 GB of storage for downloading games. You cannot buy more storage.
Is Playkey free?
No, a PlayKey is not free and does not offer any free trial. so you have to buy either an hourly or monthly subscription in order to access and play games on PlayKey.
