Blade comes with a subscription of 30 euros per month for cloud game platform Shadow
Blade, the French company behind game streaming platform Shadow, offers a monthly subscription for 30 euros from the end of next month, which means a price increase for some. This step follows after financial difficulties and a takeover by hubiC.
On a Shadow blog, Blade writes that there will be a new, simplified subscription that will replace the existing subscription. Instead of the option to choose between a monthly and an annual subscription, there will be a monthly rate of 30 euros. This means that it is a flexible subscription that can be canceled at any time. The American page of the blog states that the new prices will take effect on June 25. In the summer, new features will become available, such as support for two screens, 4: 4: 4 chroma subsampling and a new authentication system.
The existing Shadow Boost subscription will expire and will be called Shadow from next month. For some customers, the new price will mean a significant increase, as Shadow was also available for 13 euros per month in the past.
The other existing, more expensive subscriptions, namely Shadow Ultra and Shadow Infinite, will continue to exist, but are no longer actively being sold. The prices for Shadow Ultra and Shadow Infinite will be increased, which according to Blade is necessary to make the regular Shadow subscription sustainable for the future. The new prices for Shadow Ultra and Shadow Infinite will be 45 and 55 euros respectively.
The new subscription structure is necessary, according to Blade, because the company said it was in financial difficulties and had an unsustainable business model. There were high operating costs and investments that were not in line with the previous price level; this put the company in financial trouble, Blade writes. At the beginning of this month, Shadow was acquired by Jezby Ventures, the investment arm of hubiC.
Shadow allows users to rent a PC in the cloud so that they can stream games from that cloud PC to their smartphone, laptop, or their own desktop. The full release of Shadow was delayed in 2020, partly because Blade moved the service to a different cloud server. The corona pandemic also threw a spanner in the works. On top of that, Emmanuel Freund, one of the company’s founders, left Blade halfway through last year. Various employees followed him, after which a reorganization followed. In 2020, there were investments of millions of euros, but the company was unable to take advantage of this sufficiently.