Some more time for ideas.

You could use Amazon AWS EC2 instance or other cloud platforms to make a cloud gaming platform and recruit resources on demand. In steam and other cloud platforms it's possible to steal and crack the game code and logic and thus pirate the game for free. If the game is never on the client but the client acts as a dumb terminal getting screenfuls each frame over the web and sending inputs and getting an audio stream then nothing can be stolen. This idea isn't new. You'd have to have people pay to top up their accounts with play hours because the cost is hosting these games and servers. It would have to be a new niche with strategy or turn based games. Mostly because you're probably using very cheap machines (in terms of hardware capabilities) but that are costing a few cents or more every hour. And you're sending huge amounts of data every frame. It's basically video streaming. And they mustn't depend too much responsiveness, so classy strategy, turn-based, or some kind of lock-step first person shooter (it's possible and I posted some ideas before). It would probably be best for simple games like arcades or shoot em ups that newbies like to create. It costs practically nothing to add a new game to the system if it's not a full blown system like steam or origin and can even be implemented with PayPal (because we're cheap amateur indie startup geniuses that don't need to ... Well okay it's crap but it's a big world and maybe there's a little bit of room for this). Basically you just give the developers an open source basis for how to make apps for your dumb client that grabs screenfuls and audio from the server and sends inputs, and then you let people join your program and they never reveal their code or assets. 

Another idea is a unique niche for developers that make free games, like on smartphones, but for PC or any other platform includes smartphones themselves. Basically it would be ideal suited for first person shooters where you have a billboard ad on some building that players see. Advertisers go onto the system, be it the ad platforms site or that of the developers of the game, and they fill out a form. They upload the ad image or text and select any special settings like on what map or location they want their ads to appear and pay through PayPal (again, for amateurs and cheap startups or people who have nothing better to do). The problem is you can't be sure the developers haven't tampered the ad system or are serving up the ads to as many people as they say, so you have to develop trust with whatever developers and only advertise with people you trust. Eventually maybe somebody can develop a rating or third party evaluation system or website that shows everybody's rating or who's trusted or reviewed by other advertisers. 

The other idea is to use higher dimensions (4) to make a cube with a grid of tiles for a strategy or civ game that is warped (as a 3-brane in a 4-bulk higher dimensional space) to appear continuous and spherical. The buildings would be warped and it would be interesting. But you would give all the buildings a tile to be on and each would appear to be on square grid that is repeating in 3d somehow and you would be amazed at how that is happening and it would hard to wrack ones brain around it and you would learn something about higher dimensional space. [edit]

For the cloud platform, it makes sense that the developers would get paid by a share of the play hours that users spend there. It makes more sense than having people pay for play hours (bandwidth, CPU hosting, costs) and to buy a game on top of that. It would allow people to try any game they want to for free as long as they have enough play hours. It might make more sense to eliminate this complexity from the player, but some games or apps might be more worthy and complex and require a heavier cost so maybe it still makes sense to charge based on the product, just maybe a different number of credits or something, based on machine, bandwidth, space requirements and also the developer's expected share. This may be good for any sort of app like a graphical design suite or tool that would otherwise be pirated. Making the platform website neutral may make it a general purpose solution for any kind of technology.