Announcing Amazon GameLift Realtime Servers, Now in Preview

Across all game genres and all gaming platforms, player demand for vibrant online experiences is driving the growth of multiplayer games. But creating a multiplayer game can be a daunting challenge for many game developers.

Traditional commercial solutions for multiplayer game servers are often optimized for games that are very sensitive to latency with complex server simulations that are hardware resource intensive. These solutions can have high up-front or on-going license fees, can have a steep learning curve and high on-going engineering costs, and can consume more hardware resources than needed by some games, raising operating costs. These solutions are overkill for many games, including most mobile games.

Introducing GameLift Realtime Servers

Now available in preview, GameLift Realtime Servers enable you to quickly create lightweight, efficient game servers that share data between players, execute server logic at regular intervals, and maintain state. GameLift Realtime Servers can be customized with just a few lines of JavaScript, can cost as little as a fraction of a penny per player per month, and can scale to millions of players.

GameLift Realtime Servers are based on Node.js. You use JavaScript to define the behavior of the game server, depending on your needs the server can be stateful or stateless, and you can choose to execute server logic at regular intervals. GameLift Realtime Servers includes a network stack to facilitate client-server-client communication.

But, a game server alone can’t offer a stable and robust multiplayer environment to millions of players. That’s why GameLift Realtime Servers are deeply integrated with GameLift’s matchmaking and dedicated game server hosting capabilities.

After configuring your new game server, you can deploy and scale GameLift Realtime Servers to millions of players around the world. And by running your multiplayer game on dedicated servers, you’ll minimize lag, reduce cheating, and improve stability. GameLift is built on AWS’ proven global network infrastructure to bring fun and reliable gameplay to players.

GameLift Realtime Servers are included at no extra cost with GameLift, so you can deploy your game servers for a fraction of a penny per player per month. Due to the compact size of GameLift Realtime Servers, you can reduce costs by running more game sessions on a single server instance. And once you’re ready to host your game servers globally on GameLift, autoscaling and Spot instances reduce costs even further without sacrificing player experience.

Get a Sneak Peek of GameLift Realtime Servers in Preview

GameLift Realtime Servers is available in preview. If you’re attending Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019 in San Francisco, CA, visit the Amazon Game Tech booth #S627 for an exclusive live demo by the GameLift team. To sign up for the preview, please visit the GameLift Realtime Servers Preview page.