
Just-in-Time Container-based Orchestration vs Traditional Orchestration
Estimate cloud costs for hosting game server is a complex task for multiplayer games developers. Public cloud use this complexity to hide their true costs.
Amazon provides a tool to build an estimate, based on a few inputs. However, it hides, by design, the inefficiency of traditional orchestration when compared to the next-generation of just-in-time, container-based orchestration using co-tenancy.
Just-in-Time & Co-Tenancy Orchestration vs Traditional Orchestration
AWS Gamelift’s requires you to purchase full Virtual Machines (VMs) to run their traditional orchestration.
The Gamelift’s calculator labels the use of its VMs as billing as “player hours” - however, it actually combines actual play time by players, and both wasted capacity and VMs’ wasted usage (i.e., OS, scaling, unused capacity) in its calculation.
A more accurate estimate is to multiply AWS Gamelift’s “player hours” by ~70%(1) for a more accurate “actual play time” for that period to account for wasted capacity & usage.
Containers orchestration in co-tenancy delivers ~42% (2) more actual play time for the same overall usage as Edgegap’s just-in-time orchestration:
Deploys containers in-sync with player traffic to avoid wasted capacity and;
Charges only for usage by better managing resource through vCPU fractioning and co-tenancy which avoids wasted usage.
Visually, this breaks down as:

Gamelift’s Usage over Time
This is better visualized in context of a game's normal scaling over time as players join and exits its multiplayer. Where developers and studios pay for both wasted capacity and wasted usage as part of Gamelift's calculation.
This is also for a single location. AWS charges per server, per location - for more details on the other hidden cost of Gamelift's pricing, read it here.

Edgegap's Usage over Time
In contrast, thanks to usage optimization brough by co-tenancy and containers, Edgegap is always in-sync with player as to not overcharge studios and developers.
Delivering actual play time by players for every dollar spent on game server hosting & orchestration by the developers and studios.

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(1) : Average of 49 estimates between Edgegap and AWS Gamelift, retrieved 2024.12
(2) : ((1 * 100%)/70%)-1 = 42.86%
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See the full graphics here:

Written by
the Edgegap Team