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

[Phentos]

Even if I had wanted to try this, the cost of electricity in my area makes this laughably absurd. Just last month's electric bill for me was $254. And that's just for me running my computer ~15 hours a day with it usually idling/sleeping when I'm at school, along with A/C and the usual appliances. Even during the peak of the mining craze for ETH I was far from even breaking even over the month and a half spent mining on both of my PCs. 

 

During summer my electric bill averages out at nearly $450 a month because of the A/C and all my fans.

 

I suppose this consensual mining trojan might be worth using if electricity is free for you

[Morgan MLGman]

5 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

But... I could earn enough real money to buy GTA5 in less than two hours at my actual job...

These comparisons are weird - you can earn real money AND mine at the same time, it's not like those two are exclusive...
This would allow you not to spend your hard-worked money on games and get them in a different way, that's provided that the cost of electricity in your area is low-enough to even consider this way of obtaining them.

[Dabombinable]

3 hours ago, Morgan MLGman said:

These comparisons are weird - you can earn real money AND mine at the same time, it's not like those two are exclusive...
This would allow you not to spend your hard-worked money on games and get them in a different way, that's provided that the cost of electricity in your area is low-enough to even consider this way of obtaining them.

Its so nice when miners in Australia have to dump their RX 480 and 580's because the cost of power has gone through the roo. One of my friends got an RX580 8GB for around half the price of my GTX 970 as a result.

[AshleyAshes]

3 hours ago, Morgan MLGman said:

These comparisons are weird - you can earn real money AND mine at the same time, it's not like those two are exclusive...
This would allow you not to spend your hard-worked money on games and get them in a different way, that's provided that the cost of electricity in your area is low-enough to even consider this way of obtaining them.

Electricity would be the factor.  Right now for example, GTA5 is on sale for $34.99 USD on Steam.  It's important to consider that 'free games' is also going against the fact that the cost of games varies depending on sales.  Frankly, I'm pretty sure that an entire MONTH of my GPU running full tilt, plus the significant increase that would put on air conditioning in the summer, the 'free game' winds up not being 'free' at all.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

12 hours ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

Sounds like it might be interesting ... as long as I could have them mine on one of these.  

 

(Startech PCIVGAV7 16MB PCI VGA Video adapter card / XGI Volari Z7)

 

(Diamond Edge 3D 2120 (NVidia NV1 / STG2000 PCI Video Card)

 

(ATI Small Wonder Graphics Solution ver. 1 ©1988 ISA Video Card)

 

(IBM Color Graphics ISA Video Card, early 1980s)

 

Oh, and another thing I forgot ... I want a cut of the greater of either

1. 2x my power bill (cost for operating the video cards), or
2. equivalent to 50% or more of the revenue after I've paid any taxes due.

[Princess Luna]

Indeed I gave it a go and nope... I was making about 3100 coins per day according to it and even so it was like 3 full days of workload for wolfenstein... I personally felt like it wasn't worth simple the GPU stressing

[Morgan MLGman]

7 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Indeed I gave it a go and nope... I was making about 3100 coins per day according to it and even so it was like 3 full days of workload for wolfenstein... I personally felt like it wasn't worth simple the GPU stressing

With a Titan V? It's the fastest card for mining so I expected great results

Also, why do you have a Titan V?

[Princess Luna]

10 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

With a Titan V? It's the fastest card for mining so I expected great results

Also, why do you have a Titan V?

I probably I was giving them awesome results but they need to profit hard on people right? so I just deleted their software not worth the hassle...

 

I'm with it just for the lulz the V belongs to my brother he has my 1080 Ti instead, I helped him by finding someone who wanted to buy his i9 7900X and the Aorus x299 board (got rid of that awful Cooler Master V8 GTS as well) because he didn't like the x299 platform at all and wanted to jump away from it as soon as possible to avoid losing money.

 

His workload has been increasing and all but he feels our older Ryzen 7 1800X can keep him up until Z390 Coffee Lake 8 cores which he is likely to get... the problem with this is that now the downgrade from the i9 to the Ryzen chip actually caused bottlenecking even in CUDA/Hardware Acceleration on the V  to the point it was performing just like my 1080 Ti so he borrowed me it just to have some fun with it

[Orangeator]

If electricity was free this would be a great idea...

[ZimFreak]

On 5/10/2018 at 2:21 AM, asus killer said:

i doubt they are in this to lose money, so wouldn't it be more effective to just mine ourselfs and purchase the game? 

The only way this makes sense from a consumer standpoint is if they managed to buy the games at a discount, lower than we would be able to get it for. But that just means they may use stolen keys resold in bulk on g2a or something. 

[Morgan MLGman]

4 minutes ago, ZimFreak said:

The only way this makes sense from a consumer standpoint is if they managed to buy the games at a discount, lower than we would be able to get it for. But that just means they may use stolen keys resold in bulk on g2a or something. 

Nah, it's not like that.

 

This video from UFD Tech should tell you more:

 

[Combustible Lemon]

I don't get the correlation between games ETA times and their actual price. PUBG takes 31 days while DOOM is only 11, despite costing more.
Apparently they are cashing even more on the more popular games.

Although - i'll admit it is a good idea for gamers who want to utilizes their hardware but don't want to get into the hassle of cryptocurrency, specially since steam no longer take them as a payment.

[Ashiella]

On 5/10/2018 at 1:45 AM, Phentos said:

Even if I had wanted to try this, the cost of electricity in my area makes this laughably absurd. Just last month's electric bill for me was $254. And that's just for me running my computer ~15 hours a day with it usually idling/sleeping when I'm at school, along with A/C and the usual appliances. Even during the peak of the mining craze for ETH I was far from even breaking even over the month and a half spent mining on both of my PCs. 

 

During summer my electric bill averages out at nearly $450 a month because of the A/C and all my fans.

 

I suppose this consensual mining trojan might be worth using if electricity is free for you

Electric bill here, 2143 kw/h, $71.93 USD

[Razor Blade]

It would be interesting to figure out how many watts it would take to earn a certain game... For instance if their software stresses my machine and it draws...say 350 watts and it takes 31 days to buy PUBG does that mean about 260.4kWh? In that theoretical scenario with a $0.13/kWh price it would cost me $33.85 plus wear on my machine for a $30 game...

[plsno]

The time to complete the games is retarded as fuck. Games that cost the same take completely different amounts of time. 

 

Apparently, my R9 380 would need to run for 20ish days to get morrowind. my sides. Something tells me just mining ETH would net me far more $ during that time period. 

[iamdarkyoshi]

 

Never been a fan of this concept. Whats so hard about putting a list on your site?

[Mooshi]

No thanks. I'd rather buy those games instead of getting in on e-aids.

[AshleyAshes]

1 hour ago, Akselmo said:

Rip electricity bill.

But that's not the gamer's problem.  That's their parent's problem.  Amirite? :V

[Combustible Lemon]

10 hours ago, iamdarkyoshi said:

 

Never been a fan of this concept. Whats so hard about putting a list on your site?

There is a list on the site. Here you go.

[Razor Blade]

1 hour ago, AshleyAshes said:

But that's not the gamer's problem.  That's their parent's problem.  Amirite? :V

I miss the teenager living at home days....paying bills all the time sucks.

[spartaman64]

On 5/9/2018 at 6:25 AM, 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"

i mean would your parents really be angry about a few cents more on their electricity bill?

[Kukielka]

11 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

i mean would your parents really be angry about a few cents more on their electricity bill?

"A few cents"

Really? Are you aware how much electricity costs? Do some math dude.

[Morgan MLGman]

5 hours ago, Kukielka said:

"A few cents"

Really? Are you aware how much electricity costs? Do some math dude.

And are you aware that it depends on where you live? @Princess Cadence has ridiculously cheap electricity in Brazil. It also depends on with what hardware you're mining.

[Kukielka]

1 hour ago, Morgan MLGman said:

And are you aware that it depends on where you live? @Princess Cadence has ridiculously cheap electricity in Brazil. It also depends on with what you're mining with.

Source: https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average-electricity-prices-kwh.html

 

Let's say we take the cheapest prices with 0,08$/kWh.

And let's say we take the most efficient GPU miner on the market, the GTX1060.

And let's say we keep that running for 10 days 24/7 (Should be enough to get sth like a 10$ game).

At max efficiency the 1060 draws 120 watts (and we assume the rest of the rig uses 0 watts).

 

0,12 W * 24 hours * 10 days * 0,08$/kWh = 2,3$

WIth all the BEST CASE scenarios you are still at 2,3$ added in just 10 days. That's far from "just a couple cents".

A staff moderator should know this.

[Morgan MLGman]

2 minutes ago, Kukielka said:

Let's say we take the cheapest prices with 0,08$/kWh.

And let's say we take the most efficient GPU miner on the market, the GTX1060.

And let's say we keep that running for 10 days 24/7 (Should be enough to get sth like a 10$ game).

At max efficiency the 1060 draws 120 watts (and we assume the rest of the rig uses 0 watts).

 

0,12 W * 24 hours * 10 days * 0,08$/kWh = 2,3$

WIth all the BEST CASE scenarios you are still at 2,3$ added in just 10 days. That's far from "just a couple cents".

A staff moderator should know this.

So considering that you're paying ~4$ (along with the rest of the rig) for a 10$ game is a bad deal to you?
You're also forgetting one thing - electricity is sometimes paid as a fixed amount of money if you live in a block of flats. So no matter how much you draw, you pay the same amount. You're also not taking into consideration renewable resources like solar panels etc, people mining at work with their rigs etc. You cannot generalize like that judging solely on your own situation in terms of electricity as there's too many different people and different places in the world to have such a narrow point of view.


Also, what does being a forum moderator have to do with any of it?