Facebook might be planning to break into the increasingly crowded cloud gaming market, after confirming the purchase of Spanish service PlayGiga.

The acquisition was announced by Facebook's gaming division, and is suggestive of a desire within the massive social network to ramp up its presence in games. 

A report from Cinco Días valued the deal at 70 million Euros, around 78 million USD or 59.5 million GBP. While that's no small chunk of change, Facebook's bottomless coffers do render it a somewhat insignificant sum. 

Facebook itself isn't commenting on what PlayGiga will be doing for it yet, but the gaming company's own announcement holds a small clue. 

Its website now states that it's "continuing our work in cloud gaming, now with a new mission". This, again, indicates that the intention is to continue to investigate cloud gaming, rather than traditional forms of gaming like those offered by home consoles. 

Whether that means that Facebook is planning to actually launch its own cloud gaming service, though, and whether such a service would offer mainstream console games, are both unknowns at this stage. 

Facebook's influence on gaming has arguably been largely limited to lightweight social games, with the spike in popularity of time management simulator Farmville in 2010 potentially representing a high-point. When it comes to more traditional and detailed gaming experiences, though, Facebook hasn't really been much of a player. 

If it can offer a steady cloud gaming experience, it would offer competition to the likes of Google Stadia and Microsoft's Project xCloud, both of which are still in the early stages. While Stadia is actually out in the wild, it still doesn't have the widest range of titles available.