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Mathieu Duperré, CEO and founder of Edgegap
It is common for video game developers to release a day-one update for new releases after their games have gone gold. The increasing size of video games means that it is inevitable that some bugs will be missed during the QA period and remain unnoticed until the game is in the players’ hands.
Some of the most common issues game developers experience at launch are related to network and infrastructure, such as the connectivity issues wreaking havoc in Overwatch 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, as some players experience problems connecting to matches. And while there’s no way to eliminate lag, latency, and disconnections from multiplayer games, developers can minimize the chances of them occurring and the disruption they cause by following a few simple steps.
Plan for the worst, expect the best
For many video game developers, the best-case scenario for their game’s launch—that it’s a big hit and far more people end up playing it than they expected—can also be the worst-case scenario for infrastructure-related issues. An influx of too many players can cause severe bottlenecks, resulting in lag and connection issues. In the worst case scenario, servers become overloaded and stop responding to requests, usually preventing players from connecting to online matchmaking.
Another worst-case scenario is to plan for big numbers at launch and build the necessary infrastructure to support this, only for your game to launch and not have anywhere near the traffic you expected. Not only is this a big problem for your bottom line, but things can get worse if you rush to search for an infrastructure provider and forget to read through the T&Cs properly.
Some infrastructure providers will onboard new studios on a fixed contract, and won’t let them scale back if they’ve overprovisioned their servers. Some infrastructure providers offer lots of free credits, initially, only to have those credits expire after the first few months. Game studios then find themselves responsible for the costs of network traffic, load balancers, clusters, API calls, and many more products they hadn’t yet considered.
With that in mind, try not to sign up for long-term deals that don’t offer the flexibility to scale up or down. Your server setup has a lot to gain from being flexible, and your server requirements will likely change in the weeks after launch as you get a better idea of your player base; underutilized servers are a waste of money and resources.
Test, test and test again
You haven’t tested your online matchmaking properly if you’ve tested your servers under the load of 1,000 players, but you expect 10,000 or 100,000 at launch. Your load tests are an important part of your worst-case scenario planning, and you should test your network under the same load as if you experienced a sudden burst of players.
Load testing is important because you will inevitably encounter infrastructure problems when your network is under load. Still, only by facing these issues can you identify them and plan for them accordingly when your game launches.
Likewise, you want to test your game in as many different places as possible because there’s no way to tell where your traffic is coming from. We’ve had cases where studios released a very popular game overnight in Chile but needed data centers. Fortunately, you can mitigate issues like these by leveraging advanced computing providers to reduce the distance between your players and the connection point.
Consider the specific infrastructure needs of the game’s genre
Casual games with an optional multiplayer component will have a completely different network requirement than MMORPGs, with thousands of players connected to a centralized world. Likewise, a first-person shooter with 64-player matchmaking will have a different network requirement than a side-scrolling beat ’em up or fighting game, which often require custom network codes due to the fast-paced nature of combat.
People outside the video game industry assume that all video games have similar payloads, but different game genres are as technically different in terms of infrastructure requirements as specific applications.
With that in mind, it’s important for game studios, especially smaller ones, to regularly communicate with infrastructure partners and ensure they have a thorough understanding of how the multiplayer components of your game will work. A decent infrastructure provider will be able to work with you to not only ensure load testing is done correctly, but also help diagnose any wider issues.
Too many tools and not enough resources to use them
One thing that major network providers are very good at offering are tools, but these are often complex and require specific knowledge and understanding. It is worth noting that major game studios have dedicated teams of engineers to manage these tools for AAA games with millions of players.
Smaller studios need to be realistic about the number of players they expect for new game releases and their internal resources to manage network and infrastructure related issues and queries. You should work with a vendor that can handle all of this so your studio can focus on making the best game possible. The more automation you can plan into your DevOps methodology, the better!
Takeaways for small game studios
While game studios likely encounter many issues as part of their game development journey, working these three pieces of advice into your DevOps pipeline is a surefire way to minimize infrastructure-related headaches.
Don’t reinvent the wheel – We’ve seen a lot of studios try to build custom systems instead of automating and using what’s already out there. If you can develop your web code, engine and manage Kubernetes, that’s great! But is it necessary, or will building these things from scratch just create trouble further down the line?
Understand your workflows – Plan everything, use technology-agnostic providers to stay flexible, get real-time visibility and logs for your matchmaking traffic, and have a 24/7 support plan for when your game is live. The more potential problems you are aware of, the better.
Load testing your game – Build small tools and scripts to generate as much traffic as you can and crash your system as often as possible.
