Cloud gaming graveyard
Every service that streamed games, then stopped. When it died, why, and where its players went.
10 graves · last burial January 2025
Gaikai2012Gaikai
Bought, not buried.
What happened, and where its players went
Cloud demos inside a web page: a full game streamed from an ad, no install. The technology Sony wanted for the PlayStation.
- Launched on 27 February 2011. Sony bought it on 2 July 2012 for $380 million, the first big cheque in cloud gaming.
- It became PlayStation Now in January 2014, and the Gaikai name was retired into Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2017.
OnLive2015OnLive
Ten years too early.
What happened, and where its players went
The first cloud gaming service most people ever saw: a small box under the TV, PC games streamed from OnLive's servers, a spectator mode and a subscription for a shelf of games.
- Launched on 17 June 2010. Never profitable, it sold its assets for $4.8 million on 17 August 2012 and laid off its staff the same day.
- Sony bought its patents in April 2015 and closed the service on 30 April 2015. The patents went into PlayStation Now.
GameFly Streaming2018GameFly Streaming
The tech went to EA.
What happened, and where its players went
Console-style games streamed to Samsung and LG TVs and Amazon Fire TV, from the company that mailed game discs.
- Launched in 2015 on smart TVs, a screen the big services would not reach for years.
- EA bought the streaming technology and its engineers in May 2018. GameFly closed the service on 31 August 2018 and kept mailing discs.
- LiquidSky2018
LiquidSky
A PC in the sky, briefly.
What happened, and where its players went
A Windows PC in the cloud sold by the hour, with an ad-supported free tier announced at CES 2017. Install anything, stream the desktop.
- Launched on 24 March 2017 after two years of beta. Walmart bought the company in 2018.
- The service closed on 17 December 2018, the company saying it would build a new streaming platform. It never launched one.
- Jump2020
Jump
Netflix for indies. Cancelled.
What happened, and where its players went
A subscription to a shelf of independent games, streamed or downloaded, with 70% of the money going to the developers.
- Launched on 19 September 2017 with a catalogue of indie games and no big publisher.
- Its CEO announced the closure on 14 February 2020. No buyer, no successor.
- Vortex2022
Vortex
Ten euros. Then nothing.
What happened, and where its players went
A cheap European service that streamed a shelf of PC games to a browser or an Android phone, from about ten euros a month.
- Launched in 2017 by RemoteMyApp in Poland. The last update to its app was on 7 October 2021.
- Removed from Google Play on 19 January 2022. The servers went off on 28 February 2022. The website is gone.
- PlayStation Now2022
PlayStation Now
Renamed. Still streaming.
What happened, and where its players went
Sony's streaming subscription, born from Gaikai: PS3 games first, then PS4 and PS2, on a PlayStation and later a Windows PC.
- Launched on 28 January 2014 in North America. Eight years of PS3 streaming that the new plan kept without a public catalogue.
- Merged into PlayStation Plus Premium in June 2022. The service did not stop; the name did.
- Google Stadia2023
Google Stadia
Refunded everything. Kept nothing.
What happened, and where its players went
Google's own cloud gaming platform: games bought on its store, streamed from Google's data centres to Chrome, a Chromecast or a phone, with a controller that talked to the servers directly.
- Announced on 19 March 2019 and launched on 19 November 2019, with the promise of a first-party studio. Google closed the studio in February 2021, before it shipped a game.
- Google announced the shutdown on 29 September 2022 and switched the servers off on 18 January 2023. Every purchase of hardware and games was refunded.
- The last game released was Worm Game, on 13 January 2023, an internal test title. A tool to unlock the controller's Bluetooth came out on 17 January, the day before the end.
- Immersive Stream for Games, the white-label version Google sold to AT&T, Capcom and Peloton, died with it.
- Nware2023
Nware
Signed with Microsoft. Closed anyway.
What happened, and where its players went
A Spanish service that streamed your own PC games to a browser, one of the names on Microsoft's Activision cloud deals.
- Launched in 2020 and stayed in beta. In 2023 Microsoft named it among the services that would get Call of Duty in the cloud.
- In August 2023 it emailed its members that the beta was closing. It never came back.
- Utomik2025
Utomik
Fought long and hard.
What happened, and where its players went
A Dutch subscription with more than a thousand games, downloaded on PC and streamed to Samsung and Android TVs from 2022.
- Cloud play went offline in November 2024 and new games stopped arriving.
- The company filed for bankruptcy in January 2025 and closed the service the same month: “we have fought long and hard, but sadly, it was not enough.”
Buried nearby
Not services, but things players lost in the same ground.
- NVIDIA GameStream2013 – 2023Streamed your own PC to a Shield TV. NVIDIA removed it in February 2023 and pointed people at Steam Link and GeForce NOW.
- Immersive Stream for Games2022 – 2023Stadia's technology sold to other brands. AT&T, Capcom and Peloton used it. It ended with Stadia.
- Luna's game store2020 – 2026Amazon stopped selling games on Luna on 10 June 2026 and removed the games people had bought, with no refunds. Luna is a library now.
- Blade, the first Shadow2015 – 2021The company behind Shadow went into receivership in March 2021. Octave Klaba, OVHcloud's founder, took it over on 30 April 2021. Shadow itself never stopped.
Still standing
The five services this site tracks every day, with what each one costs where you are. Their status is on the servers page, live.
Missing a grave? Write to hello@cloudplay.now with a date and a source.