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Amazon GameLift Features

GameLift empowers you to build and scale the world's most demanding games. With predictive game server scaling, enterprise-grade security, and matchmaking for the largest crowds, GameLift takes the uncertainty out of launch day.

  • Iterate quickly with GameLift Anywhere which enables you to deploy, validate, and playtest changes to your game server logic in seconds.

    Patch with zero downtime 

    Keep players online and engaged with zero downtime patches to your game servers. Seamlessly migrate players to new game server versions using Amazon GameLift Alias and Queue features.

    Local iterative development

    Register your local development environment with GameLift. Compile and test updates to your game server logic by sending game session requests to GameLift. These requests will be redirected to your local development environment, allowing you to set breakpoints and debug in real time. When ready, GameLift will deploy your updates to players in up to 24 Regions and 8 Local Zones.

    Accelerate game development
  • Game launches, events, and going viral can generate sudden demand spikes. Be confident that your players can enjoy your game as intended, even during the most unpredictable circumstances.

    Global coverage

    Latency and reach are critical for an amazing player experience. Deploy game servers around the world on reliable AWS infrastructure in 24 Regions and 8 Local Zones across 5 continents. Be everywhere your players are and bring them low latency gaming experiences with 99.99% availability.

    Built for game scale

    GameLift can launch thousands of game servers simultaneously and stop unused ones just as fast. Autoscaling prevents players from waiting by quickly responding to rising player demand, and rapidly scaling back down to save costs. No need to provision or pay for peak capacity up-front, only pay for what you use.

    Reliable and secure infrastructure

    Security and reliability matter on launch day. GameLift maintains 99.99% availability, which means players will join your game and stay there once connected, even during unpredictable spikes in traffic.

    Insights, monitoring, and debugging

    GameLift provides dashboards for monitoring the performance of your game, including real-time data on player demand, server capacity and health, CPU and memory utilization. You can also create operational alarms using Amazon CloudWatch. GameLift automatically collects game server logs for retrieval and inspection, so you know how your game servers are affecting your player experience and cost. Connect directly to individual GameLift game servers through either SSM/SSH (Linux) or Remote Desktop Protocol (Windows).

    DDoS protection

    GameLift is designed to safeguard your game servers from network and transport layer distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks through AWS Shield, included at no additional charge. Learn more about protecting game servers from DDoS attacks.

    Matchmaking for the largest crowds

    FlexMatch enables you to match and connect up to 200 players into a single game session based on custom matching rules that you define. Whether you choose to match players based on player skill, latency, or custom criteria, FlexMatch’s simple but powerful rules language makes it easy to quickly create robust player matchmaking. You can use FlexMatch with the rest of GameLift game servers or on its own.

    Launch with confidence
  • Lower infrastructure costs by using Amazon EC2 Spot instances, AWS Graviton instances with up to 20% better price-performance, or bring your own on-premises compute and burst to the cloud with AWS. Save costs with GameLift's intelligent autoscaling algorithm which scales up and back down after peak hours.

    Spot instances

    Get the same high-performance of on-demand game servers with savings up to 70%. Choose from more than 100 supported GameLift compute instance types that let you select the ideal combination of CPU, memory and networking for your game. All GameLift instances come with Enhanced Networking, which provides significantly higher packet per second (PPS) performance and lower network jitter. This means lower latencies and more consistent gameplay experiences.

    Graviton instances

    GameLift supports the latest generation of compute-optimized AWS Graviton instances. Graviton instances provide savings of up to 20% versus comparable x86-based Amazon EC2 instances. Graviton instances are suitable for even the most demanding latency sensitive workloads while providing significant price-performance benefits.

    Hybrid topologies

    Mix and match compute across multiple providers including AWS, other cloud providers, and on-premises. Bring your own game server capacity and burst to the AWS cloud on demand. GameLift manages sessions, server selection, and scaling, all from a single management layer.

    Save on infrastructure costs
  • Bring your own developer tools and integrate directly with GameLift. Get started in minutes using game engine plugins for Unity and Unreal Engine, or use SDKs available for C++, C# and Go.

    Game engines

    GameLift provides plugins for major game engines such as Unreal and Unity, and SDKs are available for O3DE and custom engines developed on C#, C++, and Go.

    Platforms

    GameLift supports all major platforms and devices, including PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, mobile, web, and AR/VR headsets. Enable cross-play by putting players on different platforms into the same game servers using GameLift.

    Game backends

    Integration with popular game backends such as Pragma, Heroic Labs/Nakama, and AccelByte make it easy to add GameLift-powered game servers with just the click of a button.

    DevOps tools

    Use cloud-agnostic DevOps tools like Terraform and Pulumi powered by AWS Cloud Control to deploy GameLift and integrate with the rest of your backend.

    Game analytics

    GameLift integrates easily with your game analytics solution, including Datadog, Databricks, and others.

    Monitoring

    GameLift is integrated with Amazon CloudWatch to monitor server performance and infrastructure usage.

    Deep integration with AWS services

    Take advantage of AWS services with no extra effort. GameLift combines seamlessly with services such as AWS Shield, Elastic Container Service, and Cloud Watch so you can spend less time integrating and more time building your game.

    Integrate with existing tools