Why Do Multiplayer Games Collapse At Launch?

It’s not just the developer’s fault. In most cases, it’s not the developer’s fault at all. Take for example, what happened during the launch of Mediatonic’s Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. After 1.5 million players attempted to play the game, the servers collapsed, and the game stopped working. The cause of the problem is far too complex for a simple Twitter post, as The Guardian details: 

As with most social media blow-ups, the answer is far too nuanced for Twitter to cope with, but it comes down to this: running a global large-scale multiplayer online game is an expensive, technologically complex endeavour, even in 2020, even after weeks of beta testing and data analysis. Jon Shiring, co-founder of new studio Gravity Well and previously a lead engineer on Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, puts it very simply: “Each game relies on a lot of semi-independent services, and each one is its own scale problem. On top of that, sometimes they interact in complex ways.”
One key thing to understand is that game developers usually don’t own or operate the servers that online games run on. Instead, they are rented. A multiplayer game may rely on servers housed in dozens of data centres spread across the world, and there are hundreds of different companies running such centres. Alternatively, a developer may use a large cloud-based service such as AWS, Google Compute Engine, or Microsoft Azure, which run games on virtual machines that share server space among lots of different users. The former option, commonly using “bare metal” servers, can lead to better online performance but is complicated to manage; the latter is easier to manage, and to scale up and down depending on player demand, but can be much more expensive.

Image via The Guardian 


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Or you know, they could go back to how multiplayer games originally ran with one player as the host and all those third party server problems go away.
Way too many games are now dead because the games rely on those third party servers that cost money to keep running.
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My husband loves to entertain the kids with the throwing boiling water into the freezing cold. None of it even hits the ground! I'm going to mention the banana trick. The kids would love that.
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I used to work in Milwaukee, which is cold (though not as cold as some of these other places) and schools and offices didn't closed even when I'd be walking through knee high ice and snow to get to work. My former coworkers still had work this past week. Now in Virginia... it was drizzling at 35F not too long ago (yes, 35 on the positive side) and most of the schools and plenty offices closed and everyone's tossing salt every which way because of the POSSIBILITY of sleet. Turned out, water stays liquid when the temperature doesn't go below freezing. Who'da thunk?

Perhaps the banana test should be the defining factor on closings...
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I grew up 150 miles north of Minneapolis, where it's much colder. There's nothing like that feeling of snot freezing inside your nasal passages when you breathe.
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JM, while I sympathize completely with your car woe, I did think it sounded hilarious when I read your post. It's good to have a postive attitude about these things. Good luck with the repairs adn everybody stay warm (11 degrees in NYC right now)
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I live about an hour and half south of Minneapolis and it was -36 this morning when I woke up. They have cancelled school around the state the past two days because it's so cold! There's nothing like walking from your car into work and feeling your sinuses freezing along the way. Ahhh, winter....
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Pussies! -14F is nothing, where I come from we regularly have temperatures below -22F, even as far as -40F at times. Add windchill to that and -14F is a bloody cakewalk, almost like shorts weather.
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The water doesn't evaporate.

It sublimates. The hot liquid water breaks up into ice crystals and then much of that goes directly into a gas state. That part which doesn't falls as snow.

It's almost the same thing that happens when you hang wet clothes out in winter. They freeze, and then they dry as the ice goes from a solid directly to a gas without passing thru the water state.

Sublimation.

Neat huh?
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