Source: https://gameye.com/glossary/game-server-hosting/

---
title: "Game server hosting | Gameye"
description: "Game server hosting is the service of running dedicated game servers on managed infrastructure so studios don"
---

# Game server hosting

Game server hosting is the service of running dedicated game servers on managed infrastructure. The hosting provider handles hardware provisioning, networking, scaling, and maintenance. The studio provides a server binary (usually as a Docker container) and calls an API to start sessions.

## Hosting vs orchestration

Traditional game server hosting gives you machines. You deploy your server binary, manage updates, and handle scaling yourself. Game server orchestration goes further: you provide a container image and call an API. The platform handles placement, scaling, failover, DDoS protection, and teardown automatically.

The distinction matters because hosting alone still leaves significant operational burden on the studio — capacity planning, deployment pipelines, monitoring, and on-call rotations.

## Types of game server hosting

- **Cloud-based** — Virtual machines on AWS, GCP, or Azure. Flexible but subject to egress fees, noisy neighbours, and variable performance.

- **Bare metal** — Dedicated physical servers. Consistent performance, no noisy neighbours, typically includes bandwidth. Requires commitment.

- **Hybrid** — Bare metal baseline with cloud bursting for peaks. Combines cost efficiency with elastic scaling.

- **Self-hosted** — Running your own hardware in colocation or on-premise. Maximum control, maximum operational burden.

## What to evaluate

When choosing a game server hosting provider, the key questions are: Is an SDK required in my game server? Are egress fees included? How fast do servers start? How many providers/regions are available? What’s the scaling model? What DDoS protection is included?

Building a multiplayer game? Gameye hosts dedicated game servers: ship your server as a Docker container and start one per match with a single API call, in a region near your players.

[See how it works →](https://gameye.com/how-it-works/)

[Back to Glossary](https://gameye.com/glossary/)

## Related terms

- ### Dedicated Server

A dedicated server is a remote machine that runs your game logic independently of any player's client — the authoritative source of truth for every match. [Read more](https://gameye.com/glossary/dedicated-server/)
- ### Game Server Orchestration

Game server orchestration automates server management — session scheduling, scaling, placement, health monitoring, and failover via a single control layer. [Read more](https://gameye.com/glossary/game-server-orchestration/)
- ### Infrastructure

Game server infrastructure is the hardware and software that hosts dedicated servers and keeps multiplayer sessions running reliably at scale. [Read more](https://gameye.com/glossary/infrastructure/)