Highscore is an upcoming cloud gaming service that we are particularly excited about here at Cloud Dosage. For full disclosure, Highscore is a sponsor of the site, but we’d be equally excited even if they weren’t. That’s because of the unique features that the service is set to offer. For example, the platform will enable the ability to play every Steam game in the cloud (yes, even games with kernel anti-cheat tech that block other cloud services). Cloud game suspend & resume (think Nintendo Switch like functionality) is another feature we’re particularly excited about.
We first interviewed Highscore founder and CEO, Ian Bateman, back in April 2024. He was perhaps a bit optimistic about the timeline for release at the time. Highscore has definitely been taking their time. But, they did reach alpha status in mid-2025. We’ve been using the service here at Cloud Dosage for over half a year now, and we can tell you that it’s been getting better and better each month.
New offices for a scrappy team
Highscore has a new office on Market St. in San Francisco, and I got a chance to visit last week to check in with the team and poke them about all sorts of topics. I’ll get to some of the juicy details in a minute, but one of the main things I want to convey to our readers is what a passionate and scrappy team this is.
This is a startup looking to take on companies in the cloud gaming space that have trillion dollar market caps (e.g. Microsoft, Amazon, NVIDIA) – and it is hard not to root for them. They are a gaming company made up of a bunch of gamers. The team at Highscore are doing this because they love it. They are dedicated to making a great product. As a small company, I can see how they innovate quicker and provide a much more personal experience.
Their new office is filled with hardware components that they are testing for custom servers optimized for cloud. They are literally living cloud gaming at the moment. While I can’t share any of their specs at this point (they want to keep some surprises for launch), I can say they’re really passionate about releasing a high-quality service. They’re sweating the details.
They see a landscape in the cloud gaming space where there are lots of decent (even “good”) services out there. But they really want Highscore to be “great.” While it would be easy to launch something that is “good”, they are building a product that (as they put it) “we ourselves love to use.”
When is it coming out?
So, when will you be able to access this cloud gaming service? Ian Guarantees (with a capital G) that the service will be ready this year for general users starting with servers in California and New York.
And, it will expand from there quicker than you might expect.
While “this year” could mean anytime before December 31, I’ll add that I didn’t get the impression that Ian wanted to be spending his holidays pushing out a new product.
What’s happened over the last year?
I last visited the team just about a year ago. So, I had a lot of questions about how their plans have evolved.
And, for the most part, their goal is exactly the same – they are developing a unique cloud gaming experience and they want to make sure that when they launch they have a quality of service people will love.
They’ve had to adapt from different macro-economic challenges over the past year – e.g. tariffs and the recent RAM cost crisis driven by AI demand. Throughout these challenges, they’ve gone through an iterative process to develop the hardware, and they’ve now finally landed on a model they are confident in scaling with.
When I asked them if they see the rising costs of hardware (e.g. memory, storage, GPUs etc.) as an opportunity for cloud gaming or a challenge, their answer was an honest “both.” Rising costs is something they’ve had to stay aware of and very carefully navigate. But they see rising consumer costs as a big opportunity as well – it encourages people to give cloud gaming a try. Reduced costs with scale and the ability to timeshare hardware in the cloud can be key to keeping gaming affordable.
The economics of cloud gaming
Speaking of costs… They haven’t yet nailed down the initial pricing of the service. But the premium subscription is still targeted between $10 and $20 a month. There will be a free ad-supported tier available at some point after launch – but expect that tier to come with a queue and wait-times during peak hours, while paid members get to skip the line.
Importantly, they are committed to having no monthly caps on playtime.
When asked about the largest costs in running the service, power and hardware acquisition both came up, with the latter being the larger consideration. At Cloud Dosage, we often emphasize that cloud gaming can help users save money both upfront on PC/console costs and also on their local power bills by performing the power-hungry game visual processing at a remote datacenter (where cheaper-rates and often cleaner power generation apply).
The team is very optimistic about cloud gaming’s future. As Ian puts it, “cloud gaming’s moment has arrived.” And this is both for “expected” and “unexpected” reasons. Because of the RAM crisis, a lot of folks who tried it in the past and had a bad experience are open to trying again. “Cloud gaming has come a really long way.”
What should users be excited for?
With general availability in the US coming soon, I asked the team what features they are most excited to see in the hands of gamers. Virtual Couch (similar in spirit to Amazon’s “Luna Couch” feature) and cloud suspend & resume were two features Ian highlighted. That latter feature can get users into a game on Highscore in less time than it takes to open their Steam library! A 15 minute time window becomes a legitimate opportunity to game!
Over the course of their alpha program, they’ve gotten lots of great suggestions on how to refine the UI. They’ve worked on compatibility and making sure every Steam game launches correctly.
And Ian reaffirms that support for every Steam game really does mean every Steam game. Even those on our list of games blocked on VMs.
Ian himself is waiting for the service to go into general availability before playing the top game on his playlist: Pacific Drive. That will be a well-deserved reward.
