Taking the right steps to prepare for a successful multiplayer launch
Sebastiaan Heijne
Monday 31st January 2022
Gameye gives developers a way to run and scale their multiplayer sessions across the world. It's straightforward in theory, but complicated in practice. Every time your players jump into a match together, that game needs to be hosted somewhere.
As CEO, I often tackle similar questions from developers: Do I need servers? How does multiplayer work? What should I look for? So I want to share some practical advice to help you plan out your launch and make some important decisions.
There are two architectures you can choose when developing your multiplayer game: peer-to-peer or client-server. Peer-to-peer is when you designate one of the players as the host and the other players connect to their machine. Client-server is when the player connects to an external machine (the server) which controls the game. So when should you use peer-to-peer and when should you use client-server?
It's harder to cheat or interfere with the code when the gameplay is being controlled by a separate machine. Imagine an FPS. If it were hosted on one of the player's machines, that player gets an unfair advantage (as they'll have next to no lag). But if it's being run on their machine, that person can find ways to hack it. Client-server makes that much harder.
Gameye's CEO Sebastiaan Heijne
It's also important for difficult physics, such as bullet trajectories. You want these to be as fair and consistent as possible. And that's much easier if the session is on a client-server.
If you own and manage the servers, they're going to be much more reliable than the possible budget gaming setup many players own. It'll be more consistent, as you know what hardware the server will have. But you also don't have to deal
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