Playing Is Now More Convenient: VK Play Adds a Gamepad Configurator to Its Cloud Gaming Service
VK Play Cloud Gaming has launched a virtual gamepad configurator in its mobile app. It lets users customize the position and size of buttons, adjust stick sensitivity, and save separate control layouts for different games.
The update to a major Russian digital service reflects the broader evolution of cloud gaming toward fully adapting interfaces to mobile devices and personalizing the user experience. The main goal of the update is to make gaming more comfortable for users.
New Options for Gamers
VK Play users can now customize controls to their preferences with the virtual gamepad configurator. They can resize buttons, freely move controls around the screen, adjust stick sensitivity, add and edit controls from the library, and save or load custom configurations.
The feature makes cloud gaming on mobile devices more adaptable. Players can now launch PC games from smartphones without a physical controller or the need to buy a powerful gaming computer. Personalization is particularly useful for different screen sizes and games with different control schemes. Users with larger smartphones can enlarge the buttons, while those with more compact devices can group controls into convenient areas of the screen.
For now, the configurator is available only in the VK Play Cloud Gaming mobile app and is not supported on TVs.
Keeping Up the Pace
Similar approaches to mobile and cross-platform cloud gaming are already used by major global gaming ecosystems. The new capabilities of VK Play Cloud Gaming show the Russian platform continuing to evolve in a highly competitive market. Russia’s cloud infrastructure services market is growing rapidly. According to iKS-Consulting, it reached 165.6 billion rubles (about $2.0 billion) in 2024, up 36.3% year over year. VK Play’s updates are helping drive the development of Russia’s digital entertainment platform market.
The company plans to continue expanding the service, with a focus on personalization and user comfort. VK Play CEO Alexander Mikheev said future updates will introduce additional control elements, including movement keys, function buttons, and tools for mouse emulation.
Experts expect smartphones, tablets, TVs, and low-powered computers to increasingly become universal terminals for running demanding PC games. The cloud service already supports Windows, macOS, Android, Android TV, and browser-based access on a number of operating systems. It is also experimenting with additional services, including dedicated gaming servers and user-environment storage.
Further development of the configurator could make mobile gaming a standalone way to use the cloud service rather than a compromise for PC users. The addition of mouse controls and extra keys will be particularly important because it could expand the range of PC games that can be played comfortably directly from a touchscreen.
A Sign of Maturity for a Russian Service
VK Play is gradually removing one of the barriers to cloud gaming on smartphones: the difficulty of controlling PC games through a touchscreen. The launch of the gamepad configurator points to the growing maturity of Russia’s cloud gaming service.
Expanding the virtual controller, adding more control layouts, and creating a more consistent user experience across smartphones, browsers, PCs, and TVs could increase the number of games that can be played without physical peripherals. But competition for users is not determined by individual features such as a configurator alone. It also depends on access costs, the quality and geographic distribution of server infrastructure, network latency, and the availability of popular games.
