Mining machines are real but here we have to be specific with which type of mining machine are we referring to, we have bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies mining machines, we have dome that are reliable to be trusted like that of antminer while the cloud miner aren't trusted because they ended up being like scamming faucets that does not pay you after alot of invested efforts on mining it, they are but just a generator of traffic and the little incentives they generate are only maintained to themselves . Without paying others involved through the mining process, but the blockchain mining of bitcoin requires alot of devices and technical set up arrangements to make because it is the only genuine mining process.