
Can Epic Online Services (EOS) relays allow for dedicated server?
Unfortunately, no.
Epic Online Services (EOS) provides a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Relay system designed to facilitate direct connections between players by handling NAT traversal and firewall issues. This system is particularly useful for games that rely on player-hosted sessions or lightweight multiplayer experiences.
OS's P2P Relay is not intended for use as an dedicated (often called authoritative) game server. Dedicated / authoritative servers are centralized servers that maintain the definitive game state, ensuring consistency and fairness across all clients. They are essential for competitive or cheat-sensitive games, as they can validate actions and prevent unauthorized behavior.
Epic Online Service Recommends Edgegap
For developers seeking authoritative server solutions, EOS recommend to be integrated with third-party services like Edgegap.
Edgegap offers automated orchestration and deployment of dedicated game servers, providing game developers to deploy game server in less than 3 seconds on average, reduces latency by 58% on average for your players and, in demand, tap into the world’s first, and largest, regionless cloud network with 615+ locations worldwide.
This integration allows developers to leverage EOS's features including game services, account services and online services such as session management, and other services.
For Unreal developers seeking more than a lobby browser for matchmaking in Unreal, developers can use Edgegap's own Matchmaking system, which enables you to match players across any unique ruleset - from skill-based (SBMM) ranking, ELO, latency, region-based / geo-based, group-size parameters & much more. Learn more on Epic Game's FAB marketplace for Unreal Engine.
In summary:
EOS P2P Relay: Facilitates direct player connections; suitable for non-authoritative, peer-hosted games.
Authoritative Servers: Require separate infrastructure; can be implemented using services like Edgegap in combination with EOS.
If you're developing a game that necessitates authoritative control over game state, integrating EOS with a dedicated server solution would be the appropriate approach.
Written by
the Edgegap team
Sources and/or content collaboration with
Epic Online Services
