Want "free" PC games? You can get them by letting a German company mine on your GPU

[Morgan MLGman]

Source: https://www.techradar.com/news/rent-out-your-graphics-card-for-mining-and-get-free-pc-games
https://www.gamesfromspace.com/

I haven't seen any mention of this on the forum besides one status update so I decided to create a post about it

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A German company has concocted a scheme by the name of 'Games from Space’ which borrows your GPU for cryptocurrency mining purposes, and in return gives you free PC games.

Now, obviously they’re not exactly free as such – as the use of your graphics card for mining will up your PC’s power consumption, and have a cost on your electricity bill – but nonetheless, there’s no direct cash outlay, and so this is a tempting proposition on the face of it.

 

Particularly given that some of the games are newer big-name affairs, like, for example, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) or Grand Theft Auto V.

 

To get involved, you need a Windows PC with a graphics card that has at least 3GB of video RAM.

You can then pick a game you want, and watch a progress bar slowly tick up as your GPU is used for the company’s mining efforts. The faster your graphics card, obviously enough, the quicker progress you’ll make towards getting that game.

It seems like an interesting way of getting profit from mining, especially if the electricity in your area is cheap and your PC is powerful-enough.
Though it makes me wonder - for this idea to be worth it for average users, the profit should be higher than regular mining...

 

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On the website, you’re shown estimated timeframes of how long it will take for you to snare any particular title, based on using a GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card. For example, the aforementioned PUBG and GTA V will take you around 28 days of mining, according to the company.

Older titles can be had much more quickly, of course: you can get DiRT 3 in a day.

Someone should calculate how much money you're getting per a full day of mining.

 

What about the impact on your PC's performance? They've got an answer to that too:

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The mining application will run at full pelt if your PC is idle, and won’t interfere with the daily operation of your machine, the German firm promises.
 

Regarding when you fire up a game, in a press statement, the company noted: “If the user starts to play a game that uses the power of their graphics card, our software automatically shuts down.”

Although on the website, it suggests users can still game and mine at the same time, depending on the game being played, of course. But the overall idea is not to interfere with how well the game runs, as you would expect.

My opinion: It's a very interesting idea, we're yet to see how well it works and if this software is really good-enough to detect gaming load on your rig to turn off the mining app while you're gaming.
I also wonder about the profitability, though this is affected by your local electricity prices so results will vary. 

I've never mined in my life (not knowingly at least ) but I might give it a shot actually, my GTX 1080 does 12Gbps on the memory so the mining speed might be quite good.

Your thoughts?

[Herman Mcpootis]

Sold! when do i get to sign up my Pentium 4/GT 730?

[userzero]

What games do they give though. Worms? Lemmings?

[Morgan MLGman]

1 minute ago, userzero said:

What games do they give though. Worms? Lemmings?

My post mentions two titles: GTA V and PUBG. You can find more on their website which is linked at the top of the post.

[AlTech]

GTA V isn't a new title though..... (Original launch was on Consoles in 2013 and launch on PC was in 2015). If it takes 28 days of mining to get it with their scheme then that's really sad .

[RoyalGamer1]

I’d rather get a real job work for a week then quit and be able to buy like 10 games on a steam sale. Rather then have my pc die sooner while I wait a month for a game 

[porina]

GTAV as "new"? It's nearly 5 years old! Still good of course. I suspect they acquire the game licences at lower cost than retail, so from a user perspective this is probably ball park comparable to mining then buying it youself. The advantage here might be that the user doesn't have to set up mining software (although things like nicehash makes it trivial) and doesn't have to then convert or otherwise spend the crypto to get the game, taking out that step.

[Dabombinable]

This would be fine if I had solar. Then again-I don't think I could stand my noisy+hot GTX970 running 24/7 (the GPU shouldn't have been used in an overclocked model).

[Sauron]

Some of those games are worth a couple of days of mining in my opinion, others like pubg clearly are not... I might give it a try for the 2-3 games I'm interested in from that list, hopefully my fury doesn't suffer excessively for it.

[Morgan MLGman]

6 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Some of those games are worth a couple of days of mining in my opinion, others like pubg clearly are not... I might give it a try for the 2-3 games I'm interested in from that list, hopefully my fury doesn't suffer excessively for it.

It's pretty much what I think too, for some of those games I might try mining for a few days with my 1080, the speed should be quite good considering a 12Gbps OC on the GDDR5X memory, right?

[Sauron]

2 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

the speed should be quite good considering a 12Gbps OC on the GDDR5X memory, right?

That's what all the miners seem to think 

[ScratchCat]

5 days mining for Skyrim - something which costs $10 on Amazon and $3 on a Steam sale with all DLCs. Good idea but not great value.

[TechyBen]

Would probably cost me more in electric than the games are worth (in sales).  

[Kamjam21xx]

1 hour ago, RoyalGamer1 said:

I’d rather get a real job work for a week then quit and be able to buy like 10 games on a steam sale. Rather then have my pc die sooner while I wait a month for a game 

Or buy like 200 games on a steam sale.

Christmas (;

[Ginger_]

1 hour ago, Morgan MLGman said:

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On the website, you’re shown estimated timeframes of how long it will take for you to snare any particular title, based on using a GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card. For example, the aforementioned PUBG and GTA V will take you around 28 days of mining, according to the company.

Older titles can be had much more quickly, of course: you can get DiRT 3 in a day.

Someone should calculate how much money you're getting per a full day of mining.

Nicehash is paying $1.88/day for a 1070 right now,  which is lower than you would make direct mining. So maybe not bad for someone who isn't very tech savvy? But pubg goes for $30 and in 28 days you can make $52.64 with nicehash (before electric costs) which is ridiculously easy to use. 

 

Neat idea, not that great in practice. You'd be better off just pool mining zcash and using an exchange or two. 

[QBtech]

My main concern is like a teenager mining at his parents place because he is low on cash and this way it is "free" leaving his parents stuck with the bill.

Do they at least include a warning like "Mining cost energy and energy is not free"

[Princess Luna]

I wonder if is this safe in the first place? borrowing your hardware to others is often root of issues...

[Fluffernuttr]

3 minutes ago, QBtech said:

My main concern is like a teenager mining at his parents place because he is low on cash and this way it is "free" leaving his parents stuck with the bill.

Do they at least include a warning like "Mining cost energy and energy is not free"

True! I would check if the computer of your kid is turned off when they are not home.

[Misanthrope]

*Looks at untouched games list on steam*

 

I'm good, thanks.

[Bl00dgod]

remember when linus and luke moved around with lawnmower to earn some extra cash, that seems more profitable right now  for those in need

energy costs are ~ 28 cents / kilowatt so mining 28 days will hurt more than buying it directly

( 28 days - 672 hours while the pc runs with like ~0,4 kilowatt / h thats ~ 11-12cent/ h  ... do the math ... )

kinguin g2a and all the other shady sites offer GTA and PUBG "legit" for ~20-25 bucks

[AskTJ]

This is a very interesting thread, but mining on one GTX 1070 will take you 28 days.

 

That is like 600 hours. Imagine the amount of money you can earn in 600 hours from getting a real life job.

 

Considering the pay is $20 p/h, you can get $12,000, yet you only get a $30 game. 

 

Nice concept though, I really like it.

 

But then again, you spend a lot on power, and its really not worth it.

 

Just buy the damn game.

[porina]

2 minutes ago, AskTJ said:

This is a very interesting thread, but mining on one GTX 1070 will take you 28 days.

 

That is like 600 hours. Imagine the amount of money you can earn in 600 hours from getting a real life job.

 

Considering the pay is $20 p/h, you can get $12,000, yet you only get a $30 game. 

I don' get these comparisons, as they don't work at all. 600 hours of mining is pretty much hands off 24/7 while you do other things. 600 hours of real work, assuming you do 40 hours a week, would take 15 months. Over a year.

 

Also - Why not both? The two are not exclusive. I have a day job, and I still mine on the side. The numbers work out for me, even with electricity and taxes considered.

[leadeater]

GPUs: 2 290X's

 

ETA for Doom (2016) is 5 days 17 hours. Hmm seems like a crap deal to me.

[yian88]

14 minutes ago, leadeater said:

GPUs: 2 290X's

 

ETA for Doom (2016) is 5 days 17 hours. Hmm seems like a crap deal to me.

its a mega crap deal, on a gtx 970 i get ~150 coins/day it cant use nvidia gpu's properly apparently so fk it. Its only for AMD cards and the power cost to mine it is higher than the game price so stay out of it.

[Morgan MLGman]

1 minute ago, yian88 said:

its a mega crap deal, on a gtx 970 i get ~150 coins/day it cant use nvidia gpu's properly apparently so fk it. Its only for AMD cards and the power cost to mine it is higher than the game price so stay out of it.

Well, a GTX 970 should be pretty crap for mining since it's dependable on memory speed and it requires at least 4GB AFAIK, the last 512MB part on a 970 is slower than system memory used by Intel iGPUs in terms of bandwidth, so yeah...