Chapter 13. Cloud Hosting Dedicated Servers

The changing cloudscape means even small studios can afford to host their own dedicated servers. No longer must the fate of a game rely on players with fast net connections hosting fairly administered servers. This chapter explores the pros, cons, and methods necessary to get your game’s servers running in the cloud.

To Host or Not To Host

In the early days of online gaming, hosting your own dedicated servers required the Herculean task of acquiring and maintaining large amounts of computer hardware, networking infrastructure, and IT staff. Any hardware ramp-up was a gamble at that. If you overestimated the number of players at launch, you’d end up with racks and racks of machines lying fallow. Worse, ...

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