TL;DR — Quick Answers for Gaming Teams
- Target latency: Keep player ping below 50 ms on average and under 80 ms at peak to ensure smooth, competitive gameplay.
- Compute starting point: Begin with 24–32 high-frequency cores per region and leave 30–40% headroom for spikes and updates.
- Bandwidth needs: Plan 30–80 Kbit/s per player (plus ~20% overhead) for reliable data and voice sync.
- How to deploy: Run one container or VM per match and roll out updates safely using a 1 → 5 → 25 → 100% canary strategy.
- When GPUs matter: Use GPU-powered nodes for live streaming, replays, or spectator feeds—they’re not required for standard game servers.
At a Glance
Use Cases
- Session‑based shooters & persistent worlds
- MMO shards, matchmaking & lobbies
- Creator streaming & VOD transcoding
- Tournaments & LAN events
Primary Goals
- Sub‑50 ms RTT for players
- Consistent tick‑rate under load
- Zero‑downtime patching
- Predictable cost at scale
Foundation
- Bare‑metal performance
- High‑frequency CPUs for game loops
- Optional GPUs for streaming/transcode
- Global Anycast & WAF/DDoS
How We Help
- Curated server profiles
- Rack‑level private networking
- Multi‑region rollout playbooks
- 24/7 hands‑on support
What Gaming Infrastructure Means
Gaming infrastructure brings together compute for authoritative game servers, a low‑latency network fabric, a robust data layer for state and progression, and an operations toolchain to ship updates without disrupting live matches. On dedicated servers you avoid noisy neighbors and hypervisor jitter, keeping frame and tick stability even at high concurrency.
Key Building Blocks
- Game Compute – high‑frequency cores for the main game loop; containers for per‑match isolation; autoscaling by concurrent sessions (CCU).
- Matchmaking & Orchestration – placement service, session lifecycle, and regional routing; integrates with container schedulers (Kubernetes, Nomad) or custom allocators.
- Real‑time Services – chat/voice (UDP/TCP/WebRTC), presence, leaderboards, events/telemetry.
- Data Layer – persistent character data, inventory, logs; typically a mix of relational DBs, key/value caches, and object storage.
- Edge & Network – Anycast/geo‑routing, L3/4 DDoS mitigation, low‑jitter links, peering close to player ISPs.
- Observability & Ops – metrics, traces, log pipelines; blue/green or canary deployments; SLOs by region and title.
Dedicated vs Alternatives
Dedicated (Worldstream)
- Best For: Competitive titles, predictable tick-rate, fixed regions
- Latency/Perf: Lowest jitter; stable p99
- Control: Full (CPU pinning, NIC tuning, kernel)
- Cost at Scale: Most predictable
- Caveats: Requires capacity planning & fleet ops
Public Cloud
- Best For: Burst prototyping, many managed services
- Latency/Perf: Good avg; jitter sensitive
- Control: Medium (hypervisor abstraction)
- Cost at Scale: Can rise quickly under load/egress
- Caveats: Noisy neighbors; variable p99
Peer-to-Peer/Relays
- Best For: Small casual sessions
- Latency/Perf: Varies by host
- Control: Low
- Cost at Scale: Low at micro scale
- Caveats: Cheat risk; host churn; limited control
Managed Game Hosting
- Best For: Turnkey operations
- Latency/Perf: Good
- Control: Low–Medium
- Cost at Scale: Premium
- Caveats: Less flexibility; vendor lock-in
When Teams Choose Dedicated Gaming Infrastructure
- You need predictable tick‑rate and minimal jitter for competitive play.
- Launch day spikes and events (new season, DLC) require burst capacity at known cost.
- Anti‑cheat and authoritative servers must not share hypervisor resources.
- You want control over NIC/IRQ pinning, CPU isolation, NUMA, and kernel tuning.
- Transcoding/streaming economics favor GPUs on dedicated nodes.
When This May Not Be a Fit
- Very low/bursty CCU with no competitive latency requirements.
- Architecture tightly coupled to P2P/relay without an allocator.
- Teams that prefer fully managed voice/chat/analytics and won’t run any control plane.
Typical Workloads
- Authoritative Game Servers: per‑match container or VM; 30–128 players; 20–128 Hz tick; UDP first.
- Matchmaking & Lobbies: HTTP/gRPC APIs; Redis/MQ; stateless microservices.
- Shard/Persistent Worlds: region shards, zone servers; DB + cache.
- Realtime Comms: voice/text, presence, party management.
- Analytics & Telemetry: stream ingestion (Kafka/Kinesis equivalent), clickhouse/warehouse sinks.
- Creator Streaming: ingest > transcode (H.264/AV1/HEVC with NVENC/QSV) > package (HLS/DASH) > CDN.
Planning Scenarios
1. New Launch / Season Reset
– Demand spike: 5–10× baseline for 24–72h. Pre‑warm capacity; queue overflow to waiting rooms.
– Rollout: region‑staged canary (1–5–25–100%).
2. Regional Expansion
– Add edge site within 20–40 ms of target population. Mirror matchmaking and data caches; keep write leader close to services.
3. Esports & Tournaments
– Temporary fleets with strict SLAs. Isolate tournament game servers on pinned cores; spectate/observer nodes; VOD encoders.
Who Benefits Most
Game Studios & Publishers<br />
Own the performance envelope and cost curve.
Esports Organizers<br />
Deterministic performance for brackets, observers, and streams.
Platforms & Marketplaces<br />
Consistent player experience; anti‑abuse controls.
Education & Labs<br />
Repeatable class environments and campus tournaments.
Architecture Patterns
A. Session‑Based Multiplayer (Authoritative)
- Pattern: one container/VM per match; matchmaker allocates nearest region; state kept in‑process + Redis.
- Best for: 5–64 players, shooters, battle arena, racing.
- Notes: UDP, 30–60 Hz; pin game loop threads; NUMA‑aware placement.
B. Persistent World / MMO
- Pattern: shard by region → zone servers; write‑leader DB per shard; async fan‑out to analytics.
- Best for: hundreds to thousands of concurrent players per shard.
- Notes: backpressure on zone transfer; consistent hashing for entity ownership.
C. Creator Streaming / Live Events
- Pattern: ingest gateways → GPU transcoders → packagers/origin → CDN.
- Best for: 1080p60/1440p60 live, multi‑rendition ABR ladders.
- Notes: NVENC/AV1 for density; per‑title ladder tuning.
Results in Production
Season launch for AAA shooter: migrated regional pods to dedicated high-freq cores with per-match containers.
- −27% p99 tick time during peak
- −18% cost per CCU at steady state
- 99.96% match placement success (week 1)
“Launch-week was our smoothest yet. Players noticed the stability and our ops slept.”
– Head of Engineering, Game Publisher
Network & Latency Blueprint
- Targets: Excellent ≤20 ms RTT; Good ≤50 ms; Playable ≤80 ms. Measure p50/p95/p99 by region.
- Routing: Anycast entry + geo‑DNS; steer by real RTT not just geography.
- Controls: L3/4 DDoS scrubbing, rate limiting, WAF for control planes.
- Tuning: NIC RSS/IRQ pinning, RPS/XPS, GRO/LRO where appropriate; enable ECN carefully; set txqueuelen for bursty UDP.
Data Layer Options
- Hot State: in‑process + Redis for match; TTL eviction after session.
- Persistent: relational DB for player profile & economy; append‑only logs for audit.
- Cold: object storage for replays, VOD, crash dumps.
- Leaderboards: sorted‑set cache + periodic durable snapshots.
Capacity & Sizing Worksheet
- Profile a Match: peak CPU% and memory per instance at target tick (e.g., 60 Hz) and player cap.
- Headroom: reserve 30–40% CPU for spikes, GC, and OS jitter.
- Per‑Node Packing: #instances = floor((usable cores) / (cores per instance)). Keep 1–2 cores for system/telemetry.
- CCU to Nodes: nodes = ceil((CCU / players per match) / matches per node).
- Network: budget 30–80 Kbit/s per player upstream; add 20% overhead for protocol and retransmits.
- Storage: logs/telemetry 0.5–2 GB/hour per 1k CCU (title‑dependent). Plan 7–30 days hot retention.
Security & Compliance
- L3/4 DDoS mitigation with automatic scrubbing; per‑title rate limits
- mTLS between services; JWT for players; short‑lived tokens for observers
- Least‑privilege IAM; secure build pipeline and image signing
- Backups and restores tested quarterly; immutable logs for anti‑cheat forensics
Operations Playbook
- Deployments: canary by region, then wave rollout; automatic rollback on SLO breach
- Autoscaling: queue‑based (requests to start match) + predictive (primetime curves)
- Patching: blue/green asset bundles; version pinning per match
- Monitoring KPIs: Tick duration p50/p95/p99, Player RTT & loss, Match start time and failure rate, Crash‑free matches %, CCU vs. capacity headroom per region
Migration Guide (Cloud → Dedicated or Hybrid)
- Baseline metrics (RTT, tick, CPU) in current environment
- Containerize game servers with clear resource limits
- Stand up a single regional pod as a shadow environment
- Dual‑run matchmaking with small % of players (1–5%)
- Expand to additional regions; move stateful stores last
- Review SLOs and costs; finalize decommission plan
Popular Gaming Servers
Optimized for low-latency multiplayer, high tick rates, and predictable performance. Start hosting today.
Frequently Asked Questions
Because authoritative servers reduce cheating and stabilize tick‑rate. You patch independently of clients and keep p99 jitter low for competitive play.
Implementation Checklist
Choose regions within 50 ms of target players; verify ISP peering
Select server profile(s); confirm CPU pinning and NIC tuning settings
Stand up container scheduler and allocator; implement placement API
Integrate Redis cache and regional DB read replicas
Configure DDoS protection, firewall policies, and mTLS between services
Build CI/CD with image signing and blue/green rollouts
Instrument tick time, RTT, loss, match lifecycle metrics
Load test with production‑like traffic; validate headroom and SLOs
Plan launch day capacity buffer and on‑call rotations
Document incident runbooks and rollback procedures
Glossary
Gaming Terms Explained