A new cloud gaming service called Nuage launched on October 16 with 50 free hours a month. After covering Nuage’s launch, we reached out to its founder, Jordy Kieto, to learn more about why he built it.
What we learned went well beyond the usual launch details. Kieto is Canadian and has spent more than seven years using cloud gaming himself. He told us about travelling without a gaming PC and wanting to show his little sister a new AAA game, only to find he couldn’t get access to a decent computer for even an hour. GeForce NOW impressed him with its streaming, but it didn’t have the game he wanted. “The technology already worked, but the access didn’t,” he told us.
Kieto Taught Himself to Code Backstage
Kieto was born in Montreal and raised in Edmonton. Before his career in technology, he was a professional actor in Toronto, performing Shakespeare and teaching himself to code backstage during intermissions. That eventually led to jobs at Google and Meta, followed by his current role at Riot Games.
“Gaming was always the constant,” he told us. “Being able to build the thing I wanted as a player is still a bit surreal.”
Before launching Nuage, Kieto spent more than seven years using cloud gaming services, including Shadow, GeForce NOW, Boosteroid and CloudDeck. He liked being able to play AAA games without buying an expensive gaming PC, but each service came with frustrations.
“With the virtual-machine-style services I spent a lot of time maintaining a Windows install, drivers and launchers instead of playing,” he said. “The services that were easy to use had limited libraries. I never found one that was both.”
Those experiences helped shape Nuage. Kieto wanted popular games ready to play without downloading them, while still giving people access to other compatible games in their Steam libraries. He also wanted people to spend their time playing, not maintaining a cloud PC.
Nuage Uses Linux Now, but Windows Is Coming
Nuage currently runs on Linux, using Proton to support compatible Windows games from Steam. Kieto chose Linux because it costs less to run and makes it easier to get cloud PCs started. There’s no Windows licence for each machine, and he can start a fresh one from an image in minutes.
But Linux has its limitations. Some games won’t run through Proton, particularly those with restrictive anti-cheat systems. Kieto’s also hearing from people who want Windows because it’s what they’re used to.
“Windows is coming,” he told us.
He hasn’t given a release date.
We also asked Kieto about publisher permissions. He described Nuage as a virtual computer service, similar to Shadow or CloudDeck, where you sign into Steam and play games you own.
“We don’t sell games or run our own store, so we don’t have explicit publisher agreements,” he explained.
That doesn’t change for games Nuage has preinstalled. You still need to own them on Steam to play.
With Steam accounts involved, we also wanted to know how Nuage protects people’s sign-in details. Kieto says saved Steam logins are encrypted, with the keys held separately. Steam Guard remains active, and each cloud PC is reset before another person uses it.
You can also use the Disconnect Steam option to delete your saved login information. Steam settings and game saves are kept in private, encrypted storage between sessions, according to Kieto.
GPU Shortages Disrupted Nuage’s First Day
The October 16 launch ran into trouble almost immediately. People were trying Nuage, but there weren’t enough GPU machines to go around.
Kieto told us around 670 sessions were started that day, but only about 6% reached a ready cloud PC. Most of the others ended because no GPU was available.
“People were showing up and pressing Play, and there was simply no machine to give them,” he said.
New cloud-provider accounts are limited in how many GPU machines they can use in each region. Capacity in one region can’t cover a shortage in another.
Over the next 24 hours, Kieto spread machines across more US regions, used other GPU types when necessary and requested higher limits from the cloud provider. He also introduced a queue so people could wait for an available machine instead of having their sessions fail.
Getting a machine was only part of the wait. Early tests measured a median of 8.8 minutes from pressing Play to entering a game. On October 18, 83 instant-game sessions had a median of 2.6 minutes from pressing Play until the machine was ready. One in ten took more than 6.7 minutes just to get that far.
Those are different measurements, not a direct before-and-after comparison. Kieto wants the full process, from pressing Play to actually playing, to consistently take less than three minutes.
Even with those problems, about 500 people signed up during the first 48 hours, according to Kieto.
“The biggest surprise was that anybody tried it at all, apart from my friends,” he told us.
Funding 50 Free Hours and Growing Nuage
People trying Nuage wanted help signing into Steam and more games they could play without downloading first. He follows game requests in Nuage’s Discord and watches which games people try to launch. When a game gets enough interest, it moves higher on his list to be preinstalled. He reads those Discord requests himself.
There’s also the cost of those 50 free gaming hours. Kieto is paying for them himself. He wanted people to find out whether cloud gaming works on their connection, rather than make a decision after a short demo.
“Fifty hours is enough to get people in the door and let them really use it,” he told us.
To keep the free tier going as Nuage grows, he’s considering cheaper GPUs and possibly ads. Nothing has been decided, and he says people will get plenty of notice if anything changes.
Building Nuage Beyond Launch
He’s also setting up new cloud regions in Europe, India and Brazil, with no launch dates announced. Canadian servers are on his roadmap too. Toronto and Montreal usually connect to Virginia or Ohio, and Vancouver to Oregon. Kieto says Canadian servers would reduce latency but would require available GPU capacity and enough demand. “As a Canadian, I’d love it to be early,” he told us.
Nuage isn’t Kieto’s day job. He still works at Riot Games and fits work on the service into early mornings, evenings and weekends. What people reported overnight often shapes his day. If Steam sign-ins fail or GPU capacity runs short, he’s the one dealing with it.
As he put it, “a live service never sleeps.”
In a year, he wants people to see Nuage as “something they open every day without thinking about it, on whatever screen they have nearby. Not a tech demo or an experiment, just the way they play.”
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