This allows for much more flexibility than a typical cloud infrastructure, which often relies on a fleet manager with costly unused capacity due to the servers standing waiting for players to connect and start their games. An automated infrastructure solution can also


grow and scale based on the influx of traffic. This is ideal for older games, as many players may return to these in certain situations, such as following a sequel announcement. That’s great news for game studios, as it keeps their new game in the player’s minds and reminds them how much fun they had, which makes them more likely to purchase (or pre-purchase) the next title. While many game studios might be tempted to


use a reserved infrastructure with a small footprint to reduce costs, the minute something happens, such as a sequel announcement or even a popular streamer playing an old game out of nostalgia, problems will start brewing. This infrastructure could be crushed by the amount of traffic and leave a lasting negative impression on the affected players.


Further complicating the situation is that many old


games require extra pampering, as they were designed in a time when tools for infrastructure automation, such as containerization, didn’t exist. Game studios will need to spend resources upgrading their older games to work with newer technology so deployments can be automated. Once that initial work is complete – and it can be quite fast these days with all the tools now available for developers – it will be possible to remove tasks from the employees required to manage them, so that they can focus on new projects.


That said, older games are also generally more susceptible to security issues, meaning it’s usually easier for players to cheat in them. However, because the user base is typically smaller, they also attract fewer cheaters. The same could be said of DDoS, although this does still happen as demonstrated by Sony’s shutdown of several old LittleBigPlanet games in 2021. Running servers on a highly distributed edge infrastructure makes it much more flexible in terms of mitigating these attacks.


Players may even experience a higher quality of service as edge computing deploys game servers as close to users as possible to reduce latency. The transition is also relatively seamless and can take a few minutes to a couple of hours once the game has a Linux-based server.


One thing to not forget is that some tests need to happen to make sure the experience is similar. For example, some old games can be single-thread, meaning they can only use one CPU on the game server, even if eight cores are


January 2023 MCV/DEVELOP | 9


available. If they were previously running on a higher clock- rate CPU, and you bring them to a lower clock-rate CPU, the experience might be affected.


WHAT’S THE SOLUTION?


Some games including Minecraft and Counter-Strike have tried to get around the issue by putting the control into the hands of players by letting them run (and pay) for their own servers, known as ‘community servers’, to lengthen the game’s lifespan. In the case of older games such as Unreal Tournament 2004, community servers can only be created if the server binary is available, which Epic would have to release to allow this to happen. However, most developers are hesitant to allow this as it takes away their control and involves openly sharing part of their game’s code - enabling players to decompile information, look behind the curtain and possibly increase the likelihood of cheating.


While that might be a solution for some, other game developers are looking at alternative solutions. Edgegap is being approached weekly by an increasing number of AA and AAA studios looking to keep their older games active and avoid the negative publicity that often occurs once the media picks up news of the shutdown. This has us feeling hopeful that the number of older online games shut down will reduce in the future, with beloved titles preserved so gamers can enjoy them for generations to come.


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