Playruo, a French cloud gaming platform designed for video game studios and publishers, has announced that it has secured €2.1 million in funding. This funding will accelerate the commercialisation of Playruo's services, which include instant gameplay testing, QA and product approval, as well as providing previews and reviews for the press. It will also enable the secure sharing of builds between studios, publishers and investors.This funding round therefore marks Playruo's transition from a market validation phase to an international business expansion phase. We talked to Fergus Leleu, Playruo's CEO and co-founder, about creating a platform for testing and sharing games via streaming, how the funding will be used and the cloud gaming market in general.

GamesMarkt: Why did you return to cloud gaming after your time at Shadow?

Fergus Leleu: "It's precisely because of our experience at Shadow that we chose to come back to cloud gaming, but with a fundamentally different approach. At Shadow, we had a front-row seat to both the potential and the limitations of traditional cloud gaming. Over the past decade, we explored multiple business models, and one key insight stood out: the technology works, but most models fail to align costs, usage, and value creation in a sustainable way."

"That realization led us to rethink the problem from the ground up with Playruo. Instead of targeting end-users, we built a solution for publishers and developers, focusing on high-impact use cases across the entire lifecycle of a game, from playtesting in development to marketing and distribution at launch. We didn't just come back to cloud gaming, we turned it into a performance tool for both product validation and player acquisition.This approach is already validated through early successes with partners like Ubisoft and Webedia."

Fergus Leleu, Playruo's CEO and co-founder © Playruo

GamesMarkt: Why is Playruo's offering primarily aimed at developers and publishers?

Fergus Leleu: "Playruo is aimed at developers and publishers because that's where the value is both created and lost. Studios don't struggle to build games, they struggle to validate them early and make them succeed at launch. Playtesting and marketing are two sides of the same problem: reducing uncertainty and maximizing impact. By enabling studios to distribute playable versions instantly, whether to testers during development or to players during marketing campaigns, we directly improve both product quality and go-to-market performance. We sit at the intersection of building the right game and making it succeed. There's also a structural reason: building Playruo requires deep expertise across cloud infrastructure, video streaming, and real-time performance, a combination very few companies worldwide can master."

GamesMarkt: Why should games companies choose Playruo?

Fergus Leleu: "Companies choose Playruo because it improves both how games are built and how they perform in the market. On the playtesting side, we allow studios to distribute builds instantly, securely, and at scale, without any hardware constraints. This means faster feedback loops, more testers, and better-informed decisions during development. On the marketing side, we remove the biggest friction in game discovery by allowing players to try a game instantly, in one click, without download or installation."