By Jon Scarr
Jordy Kieto grew up in Edmonton playing Nintendo 64 games. Now he's the founder of Nuage, a cloud gaming service that launched on October 16, 2026. Nuage offers 50 free gaming hours each month and lets you stream compatible games from your Steam library through a browser, without needing a powerful gaming PC.
Born in Montreal, Kieto took an unusual path into technology. He performed Shakespeare in Toronto, taught himself to code and eventually worked at Google, Meta and Riot Games. I spoke with him about the games he grew up with, how he got into programming and how sharing games with his younger sister helped inspire Nuage.
Growing Up With Nintendo in Edmonton
Kieto's earliest gaming memories go back to the Nintendo 64. Paperboy was the first game he owned, but The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time made a lasting impression. He still remembers reaching the game's first boss, Gohma, and being genuinely scared to fight it.
That first boss didn't put him off The Legend of Zelda series. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time started his lifelong love of Nintendo and, as he puts it, probably a lifelong gaming habit too.
"I still can't believe my mom picked out the best game maker for my first console," he told me.
He went on to play the Nintendo GameCube, and Nintendo games became something he shared with his younger sister.
Gaming With His Sister Across Generations
Kieto's younger sister grew up with different Nintendo consoles. Where his childhood centred on the Nintendo 64 and Nintendo GameCube, hers was shaped by the Wii and Wii U. Her first game in The Legend of Zelda series was The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD.
"My little sister inherited all of my love for gaming," Kieto said.
She's now studying graphic design at the University of Alberta and working toward a career as a video game designer.
He bought his sister a Steam Deck, and they still play games together remotely.
"Sharing games is one of my love languages, and that's a big part of where Nuage came from," he told me.
From Shakespeare to a Career in Technology
Long before Nuage, Kieto was performing Shakespeare professionally in Toronto and learning to program backstage during intermissions. He still calls himself a "classic theatre kid." He first got interested in coding at hackathons, although software wasn't the reason he started going.
"Honestly, I started going to hackathons for the free food," he said. "I was a literal starving artist in Toronto. Once I was there, I started picking up code."
His first real program was a text-based banking app written in Python. It didn't have a graphical interface, just commands typed into a terminal. The program used fake money and let someone deposit or withdraw funds. It also returned an error if they tried to withdraw more than the account held. Kieto says it taught him the basics of how software creates, reads, updates and deletes information, skills he still uses.
He continued attending hackathons. In 2017, Kieto says his team won a legal technology hackathon in Toronto and received a few thousand dollars in prize money. That was when he realized programming could become a real career.
His first technology job was at Loblaw Digital. Kieto credits the people there and elsewhere who believed a self-taught theatre kid could work in technology. He also served as a teaching assistant for the University of Toronto's web development coding bootcamp.
"Teaching taught me to explain my thinking, not just do the work, and that's stayed with me ever since," he said.
He later worked at Uber, Google and Meta. He now works at Riot Games and develops Nuage outside his regular working hours.
Building Nuage and Staying Connected to Canada
Now based in Los Angeles, Kieto still plays games with family and friends back home in Canada.
"My whole family is in Canada, and so are a lot of my friends," he told me. "Mostly we just game together. We have a few Baldur's Gate 3 campaigns going right now."
His desire to share games also contributed to Nuage's beginnings. On a trip without his gaming PC, Kieto wanted to show his sister a new AAA game but couldn't find it on the cloud gaming service he tried. He also still has connections to the Canadian technology community through people he worked with in Toronto.
Since Nuage launched, Kieto has heard from a handful of Canadian gamers. One person from Montreal told him they'd like to play Elden Ring through the service.
He'd also like to offer Nuage servers in Canada. Right now, he says people in Toronto and Montreal generally connect to Virginia or Ohio, and Vancouver gamers to Oregon. A Canadian server could reduce latency, but he'd need available GPU capacity in Canada and enough local demand to keep those machines busy.
"As a Canadian, I'd love it to be early," he told me.
Jon Scarr
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