The way it's explained in the main post does seem to suggest that there is a gamer and their objective is to unfold amino acids to build blocks of protein and it also suggests that students enjoyed playing it.The word playing is a verb. A word that conveys an action. Playing certainly does seem to convey an action to me therefore I imagine they are really playing it.
Sounds cool I'm off to look for it!

It's not working just buggers up the internet

@Ajescent

"So...to simplify this for my own understanding. They are effectively giving everyone a rubix cube(kinda) to try and solve and whoever solves it could potentially have a hand in curing AIDS?"

Kind of. But I guess they get the solution from the combined efforts.

To folding@home. Its a regular distributed computing program. Also it COULD help cure cancer but the aim is a different one. Your PC is simulating part of a protein folding in realtime the aim is to take the data from millions of simulations and from the data you can deduce the real method. Then humans are able to watch a protein fold in realtime that helps to understand a lot of illnesses (not only that it will help in a lot of other ways thatcant be even predicted yet). But it wont deliever the cure directly its a stepping stone for a lot of things.