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Amazon GameLift Servers

Amazon GameLift Servers FAQ

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General

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Amazon GameLift Servers is a capability for deploying, operating, and scaling dedicated game servers for session-based multiplayer games. You can deploy your first game server in the cloud in just minutes, saving up to thousands of engineering hours in upfront software development and lowering the technical risks that often cause developers to cut multiplayer features from their designs. Built on the  Amazon Web Services China regions proven computing environment, Amazon GameLift Servers lets you scale high-performance game servers up and down to meet player demand. You pay only for the capacity you use, so you can get started whether you’re working on a new game idea or running a game with millions of players.
Amazon GameLift Servers works with most multiplayer game genres.

Amazon GameLift Servers is designed for multiplayer games that have game sessions that begin and end within a specified time period. These can be multiplayer games in genres like first person shooters, MOBAs, fighting, racing, or sports.

Amazon GameLift Servers Realtime is ideal for those session-based multiplayer games that share small amounts of data amongst players and have low-complexity simulation. These attributes are typical of games in genres such as card games, mobile match 3, realtime strategy, role playing, or turn-based strategy games.
Amazon GameLift Servers is designed to work for latency-intolerant games. It introduces no additional latency during gameplay.

Once a player connects to a game server, all player-to-server communication is done directly between your game client and game server. Latency experienced during gameplay will depend upon the player's internet connection and their physical distance to the game server. You can reduce latency by positioning game servers in regions that are as close as possible to your players. Amazon GameLift Servers is currently available in Amazon Web Services China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet, and Amazon Web Services China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD.
Yes. Amazon GameLift Servers supports Unreal Engine, Unity and custom C# and C++ game engines. Learn more about engine integration in the Amazon GameLift Developer Guide.
You can quickly test Amazon GameLift Servers using our sample game. You can also find samples in our Integration Guides. Visit the Getting Started page to learn more.
Amazon GameLift Servers provides game engine plugins for both Unity and Unreal Engine. There are also server SDKs available for custom game engines written in C++, C# and Go programming languages. Amazon GameLift Servers supports game servers that run on Windows Server 2016 and Amazon Linux 2. Amazon GameLift Servers Realtime supports JavaScript to customize server logic.
Amazon GameLift Servers is agnostic to which platform the client runs on. It supports all major platforms and devices, including PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, mobile, web, and AR/VR headsets. You can integrate any backend system with the Amazon GameLift Servers APIs for matchmaking, game session creation, and player session creation using the Amazon SDKs. Game clients and game services (such as matchmaking or authentication) can use the Amazon GameLift Servers functionality in the Amazon SDK to communicate with the Amazon GameLift Servers service and join players to games. The Amazon SDK is available in C++, Java, .NET(C#), Go, Python, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript and other major languages.
Yes. Amazon GameLift Servers is built on open web standards, and is compatible with all major game platforms.
No, you are not required to authenticate players. However, you are required to provide a unique, non-personally identifiable player ID for each user. Learn more in the Integrating a Game Client section of the Amazon GameLift Servers Developer Guide. Your game backend must authenticate to your servers on Amazon GameLift Servers using your Amazon Web Services credentials. To learn more about how to set up and configure Amazon Web Services credentials, please visit the Amazon GameLift Servers Developer Guide.
You can track performance and health metrics for your game servers to discover and investigate issues. You can debug fleets during build extraction, installation, and runtime validation by downloading fleet creation logs from the Events tab in the Amazon GameLift Servers Console. You can also remotely access individual instances in a fleet to inspect status, debug problems, or connect debugging tools. To remotely access instances, you can use either Windows Remote Desktop for Windows or SSH for Linux. Visit our Amazon GameLift Servers Developer Guide to learn more about debugging.
Fleet-level aggregated data is generally available in the Amazon GameLift Servers console within ten minutes of collection and server-level aggregated data is generally available within five minutes of collection.
The Amazon GameLift Servers Console provides real-time dashboards to help you understand your player’s experience. You can also use Amazon CloudWatch to monitor all of your Amazon GameLift Servers resources and react to emergent issues. With CloudWatch, you can create at-a-glance dashboards and configure operational alarms to help identify issues before they impact your players. Amazon GameLift Servers metrics are automatically available in CloudWatch as long as your fleet is active. Learn more about CloudWatch metrics in the Amazon GameLift Servers Developer Guide.
The Amazon GameLift Servers matchmaking platform includes both FlexMatch and game session queues. FlexMatch lets you match players together based on rules you define. You can use FlexMatch to configure rule sets that group players together while balancing match quality and player wait time. FlexMatch results are automatically fed into a game session queue, which can intelligently select the closest available game server for the match based on each player’s location, giving players the lowest possible latency by leveraging Amazon Web Services’s broad China footprint. Learn more about game session queues and FlexMatch in the Amazon GameLift Servers documentation.
An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is a supported and maintained image provided by Amazon Web Services for use on Amazon EC2. An AMI is designed to provide a stable, secure, and high performance execution environment for applications running on Amazon EC2. It also includes packages that enable easy integration with Amazon Web Services, including launch configuration tools and many popular Amazon Web Services libraries and tools. We provide ongoing security and maintenance updates to all instances running the Amazon AMI.
First, integrate Amazon GameLift Servers into your game back-end and game server using the Amazon SDK  and the Amazon GameLift Servers SDK. Then, upload your game server to Amazon GameLift Servers in your Amazon Web Services Account, and use the Amazon GameLift Servers console to set up fleets of computing resources and deploy your game. When your players connect, you can monitor your fleet through the Amazon GameLift Servers console. You can also integrate Amazon GameLift Servers with your custom game services like identity or matchmaking using the Amazon SDK.
Amazon GameLift Servers provides documentation to help you prepare for the production launch of you game. Topics include preparing your game for use with Amazon GameLift Servers, load testing, requesting service quota increases. Please see our developer guide for more information.
Every customer has access to documentation, forums, and the Amazon Web Services Solutions Library Additional support is available in Amazon Web Services Premium Support packages

Instances and Fleets

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A fleet is a set of Amazon GameLift instances in one region running one build of your game server. You can accommodate changes in player demand by increasing or decreasing the number of instances in your fleet. A fleet is configured to use a certain instance type, to deploy a build, and to run one or more server processes on each instance.
Fleet creation time is dependent on the size of your game build, your installation script runtime, and the number of locations you are deploying. This time is measured from the time you submit a fleet creation request to when it is fully deployed and accessible to your players. To learn more about fleet creation times, please visit the developer guide.
Please see the Amazon GameLift Servers pricing page for a full list of Amazon GameLift Servers instances.
The right instance type depends on your game’s server performance and the number of server processes you plan to run concurrently on each instance. The computational complexity of your game, optimization of your game and network code, and maximum number of players are the main drivers for the size of the instance that you will need. One of the advantages of Amazon GameLift Servers is that you only pay for what you use, which makes it convenient and inexpensive to test the performance of your game on different instance families and types.
Up to 50. The number of server processes depends on the performance requirements of your game servers and the instance type you choose for your fleet. When you set up a fleet, you will select an instance type and configure the fleet to concurrently run an optimum number of server processes. Running more processes on fewer instances can help you decrease costs. You can also configure your fleet to run multiple servers builds or game configurations on each instance.
Amazon GameLift Servers provides a truly elastic computing environment. Amazon GameLift Servers instances enable you to increase or decrease capacity within minutes, not hours or days. You can provision one, hundreds, or even thousands of server instances simultaneously.

Seamlessly provide the capacity you need to meet changes in player demand with Amazon GameLift Servers Target Tracking. Target Tracking is an autoscaling feature that allows you to simply set a percentage target for available game sessions, creating a buffer to accommodate fluctuations in player traffic. Amazon GameLift Servers will add or remove capacity as required to keep this buffer of available game sessions at the target value you define and adjust to a fluctuating load pattern, minimizing rapid fluctuations in capacity. For more information, see the Autoscaling section of the Amazon GameLift Servers Developer Guide.
Amazon GameLift Servers retains activity metrics. When you terminate an instance, any data generated by your game server and stored on the instance is lost. However, you can instruct Amazon GameLift Servers to retain and store these log files for up to seven days after the instance has been terminated.
Yes. You can remotely access an instance in a fleet that is in an activating, active, or error status. This is useful for debugging, inspecting player activity in real time, or connecting performance monitoring or benchmarking tools. You can modify your fleet’s port settings and protocols using either the Amazon command line interface (CLI) or through the Amazon GameLift Servers console.
Yes, Amazon GameLift Servers makes updating production fleets simple with its alias feature. An alias enables you to direct traffic to fleets without having to change the client end-point descriptor. After creating a new production fleet, you can edit an alias to point from an older fleet to this newer fleet, routing all connecting players to the new fleet alias feature. Learn more about creating aliases in our Amazon GameLift Servers Developer Guide.
Amazon GameLift Servers is currently available in Amazon Web Services China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet, and Amazon Web Services China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD.

Amazon GameLift Servers Spot

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Amazon GameLift Servers Spot instances offer access to spare Amazon Web Services computing capacity at savings of between 50% and 85% compared to On-Demand prices. However, Spot instances can be interrupted by Amazon Web Services with two minutes of notification when it needs the capacity back. You can use this notification period to migrate or shut down games running on those instances. Using the Amazon GameLift Servers built in game session placement algorithm, you can optimize for cost savings while maintaining high game server availability. The algorithm places new sessions on game servers based on player latencies, instance prices, and Spot interruption rates. You can customize how the algorithm balances these priorities.
You get the same high-performance hardware as Amazon GameLift Servers On-Demand instances, but save between 50% and 85%. By accepting a small decrease in server availability as compared to using only On-Demand instances, you can save a lot of money. For more information on Spot pricing and to see pricing examples please see the Amazon GameLift Servers Service pricing page.
You can find the best practices for using Spot instances in our developer guide. You can also find a tutorial on how to best set up a game session queue for Spot Instances in our developer guide.
When Amazon Web Services occasionally needs more capacity, some Amazon GameLift Servers Spot instances could receive a warning that the game servers must shut down within two minutes. When that happens, you can use the warning period to gracefully migrate or shut down active game sessions. To maintain an equal amount of available capacity for your game, the game session placement algorithm will automatically start new servers in the same region by using alternate Spot instances types or by using On-Demand instances.
No. The Amazon GameLift Servers game session placement algorithm minimizes the chances of termination.
The Amazon GameLift Servers game session placement algorithm tracks Spot interruption rates and uses this data to automatically place games on instances with low interruption frequencies.
While a Spot instance remains running, you will be charged the price set at the beginning of each hour.
The Amazon Web Services Management Console makes a detailed billing report available which shows Spot instance start and termination/stop times for all instances.
Amazon GameLift Servers Spot prices fluctuate based on the current supply and demand for each instance type in each region. Spot instance prices are set by Amazon and adjust gradually based on long-term trends in supply and demand for Spot instance capacity. However, Amazon GameLift Servers Spot prices never exceed Amazon GameLift Servers On-Demand prices. In the Amazon GameLift Servers console, you can view three months of historical pricing and savings data for Amazon GameLift Servers Spot for every instance type and region.

Amazon GameLift Servers FlexMatch

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FlexMatch is available to anyone using Amazon GameLift Servers managed game servers. FlexMatch can also be used as a standalone feature and is available to anyone, regardless of whether they host their games peer-to-peer, on-premises, or on cloud compute primitives. Please see our documentation for more information on FlexMatch.
Flexmatch is available in Amazon Web Services China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet, and Amazon Web Services China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD.
A FlexMatch matchmaker can be placed in Amazon Web Services China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet, and Amazon Web Services China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD.
No. Once you create a FlexMatch rule set, that rule set can’t be changed. To change a rule set, you must clone the rule set, give it a new name, and then create your changes. To change the rule set for a live matchmaker, you then update the matchmaker’s configuration to use the new rule set instead of the old one. Because a rules set may be used by one or more live matchmakers, this limitation guards against causing unintended consequences to live production systems.
Yes. If you would like to use your own matchmaking system, you can feed match results into any game session queues that you define.
Using FlexMatch in standalone mode will incur charges based on player packages and matchmaking hours consumed. See the Amazon GameLift Servers FlexMatch pricing here for more details. Successful matches with FlexMatch automatically result in the creation of new game sessions. Depending on how you’re managing game server capacity, creating new game sessions may trigger additional server instances, for which you’ll be charged standard Amazon GameLift Servers instance prices.

Storage

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Amazon GameLift Servers includes 50GB EBS General Purpose (SSD) Volume for each instance. However, this limit is adjustable. For more information please see the Service Quotas page.
The build catalog is a record of all of your server builds that have been uploaded to Amazon GameLift Servers. Builds in ready state are available for fleet creation at any time.
The build catalog can store the maximum of 1,000 builds or 100GB of storage.

Service Quotas

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Yes, by default, you are limited to 10 fleets per region. However, this limit is adjustable. For more information please see the Amazon GameLift Servers Service Quotas page.
No, you are only limited by your Amazon Web Services account limits.
Yes, Amazon GameLift Servers is limited by the number of instances available to your Amazon Web Services account. If you need to raise this limit, you can do so via the service limits page in the Amazon GameLift Servers console.
If you are using Amazon GameLift Servers to manage your game sessions or use FlexMatch to create new game sessions after matching players then the maximum number of players per game session is 200. If you do not use Amazon GameLift Servers to manage your game sessions then your player count is only limited by hardware and networking constraints that are being utilized.
No, the maximum number of players per instance is primarily dictated by your game design and game code.
No.

Billing

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You pay for the compute resources and bandwidth your games actually use, without monthly or annual contracts. Please see the Amazon GameLift Servers pricing page for more information.
FlexMatch in standalone mode will cost ¥ 133.33 per million player packages, and ¥ 6.67 per matchmaking hour. FlexMatch counts a Player Package each time you submit a player’s request to play a game session. This package also includes player attributes used to evaluate a match. Matchmaking Hours is calculated as the duration FlexMatch is executing a matchmaking evaluation, rounded up to the nearest 1 microsecond. Please see our pricing page for details.
No. Please note that your Realtime servers are run within the context of game sessions. Depending on how you’re managing game server capacity, creating new game sessions may trigger additional server instances, for which you’ll be charged standard Amazon GameLift Servers instance prices.
Billing begins when you allocate Amazon GameLift Servers capacity and Amazon GameLift Servers launches your game’s server binary for the first time on each instance. Billing concludes when you stop instances. Both Windows and Linux instances are billed at per instance-second and have a 1 minute minimum charge per-instance.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

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Our SLA guarantees a Monthly Uptime Percentage of at least 99.5% for Amazon GameLift Servers within a region.
You are eligible for a SLA credit for Amazon GameLift Servers if the region that you are operating in has an Monthly Uptime Percentage of less than 99.5% during any monthly billing cycle. For full details on all of the terms and conditions of the SLA, as well as details on how to submit a claim, please see the Amazon GameLift Service Level Agreement for Amazon Web Services (Ningxia Region) SLA here and the Amazon GameLift Service Level Agreement for Amazon Web Services (Beijing Region) here.

Security

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No. Only your authorized users with the necessary Amazon Web Services credentials can access the Amazon GameLift Servers console. You can use Amazon Web Services Identity and Access Management (IAM) to securely share Amazon Web Services credentials across a team. Please see Creating IAM Policies for Amazon GameLift Servers for more details.
Yes. To receive a history of Amazon GameLift Servers API calls made on your account, you simply turn on CloudTrail in the Amazon Web Services Management Console.
For more information about securing Amazon Web Services resources, see the Amazon Web Services Security Center.
Security is a shared responsibility between local cloud service provider and you. The shared responsibility model describes this as security of the cloud and security in the cloud. You can read more about how this applies to the Amazon GameLift service in our developer guide here.

Getting Started for Free

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Sign up for an Amazon Web Services account for instant access to the Amazon Web Services Free Tier, which will give you the following benefits:

125 hours per month of Amazon GameLift Servers c3.large, c4.large and c5.large (combined) depending on region for On-Demand instance usage, plus 50 GB EBS General Purpose SSD storage

15 GB per month of bandwidth out, aggregated across all Amazon Web Services services

Try Amazon GameLift Servers for free here

Learn more about Amazon GameLift pricing

Visit the pricing page


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