The Studio 

Crater Studios is an Unreal Engine-focused game studio with a simple mission: make amazing games, faster.

Their initial release was Dwarven Realms in 2024, an action-packed ARPG that delivers complex systems inspired by traditional ARPGs, combined with the sheer mob density of rogue-lite survivor games.

Following its overwhelmingly positive initial release, the studio is now working on Gravebound. Gravebound is a post-apocalyptic extraction shooter where rogue AI appliances have turned deadly, and players must scavenge loot, battle absurd mechanical enemies, and fight other players in a vibrant comic-book wasteland. Extract early with your gear intact or risk everything for bigger rewards in this PvPvE experience were dying means losing it all.

The Challenge 

PvPvE is, arguably, one of the most competitive genres in online multiplayer this decade. Players expectations are sky high – the same from a AAA to indie game studios.

This means every facet of the online experience, be it controlled by the developers (gameplay) or outside it (infrastructure) must be flawless.

As stated by Crater Studio’s co-founder & CEO, Amnon Israel:

We were trying to solve three major problems, unreliable server orchestration, long spin-up times, and inconsistent player experiences across regions.

These issues slowed development, created instability in our playtests, and pulled engineering time away from actually building the game.

The Solution – Game Server Orchestration 

Edgegap’s modern orchestration is built on three major foundations that help studios with their game server hosting:

1. Edgegap uses containers, which standardize the deployment of these compute workloads, solving performance consistency across online experiences and enabling game servers to be deployed in 1-3 seconds worldwide to launch games faster.

2. Edgegap's orchestration leverages the world's first, and largest, regionless edge network that enables game studios to deploy game servers worldwide to 615+ locations at a single price, solving both the cost and coverage issues for game studios where one (usually coverage) had to be sacrificed to optimize the other (usually cost).

3. Finally, Edgegap's orchestration uses a patented decision-making system to deploy game servers at the ideal location for each player in a match (usually the closest), helping improve the in-game experience with lower latency for all players. 

4. Edgegap also prides itself on its easy integration and support.

As Amon said:

Edgegap solved all of this for us. Their platform gave us fast and reliable deployments worldwide, dramatically reduced overhead, and let our team focus on gameplay instead of infrastructure.

Combined, these elements enabled Crater Studios to deliver on its mission.

Easy Integration: Integrating with Edgegap's API was remarkably straightforward for Crater Studios, with an “extremely low integration cost […] that worked immediately” per Amon Israel. The “support team was responsive and genuinely understood game developers, providing clear documentation and hands-on Discord assistance that allowed the Gravebound team to add dedicated server hosting and orchestration in days rather than months.

Modern Orchestration for Dedicated Servers: As the team said, they especially loved how “focused and clear the product was. They did not try to sell us a massive engine or a complex ecosystem. Instead, they offered one clean, independent entry point to spin up servers.”

• Automated Infrastructure that Helps Studios Ship Faster: Edgegap's containerized platform automated critical deployment and scaling processes, which "dramatically reduced overhead, and let our team focus on gameplay instead of infrastructure." Without needing dedicated backend developers, Crater Studios could concentrate on perfecting Gravebound's chaotic PvPvE combat and quirky mechanical enemies while Edgegap handled the complex orchestration of their multiplayer infrastructure automatically. As the team noted, "Edgegap helped us ship faster, more confidently, and with far less friction" — essential for a studio racing to bring their post-apocalyptic game to market

• Instant Global Reach: From the moment Puck launched, NS7 was able to deploy their game to 615+ locations worldwide at a single price point, on-demand. This eliminated the traditional cost vs. coverage dilemma, allowing the studio to reach players in previously cost-prohibitive markets or selective regional availability which would have created latency issues for players in these countries. 

• Straightforward, Usage-Based Pricing: "Pricing was equally refreshing, fully usage based with no hidden fees," allowing Crater Studios to scale Gravebound's infrastructure predictably as their player base grew. Edgegap's orchestration leverages the world's first and largest regionless edge network, enabling the studio to deploy game servers worldwide to 615+ locations at a single price — solving both the cost and coverage issues that typically force focused teams to sacrifice global reach for budget constraints, or vice versa.

Conclusion 

By removing the complexity of server orchestration, eliminating geographic trade-offs, and providing truly responsive support, Edgegap allowed the team to punch above their weight class in the fiercely competitive PvPvE genre.

For a lean studio focused on building their post-apocalyptic shooter, that meant hundreds of hours saved and redirected into crafting the game's chaotic appliance-filled world, not wrestling with backend infrastructure.

The studio can now focus entirely on what they do best: crafting compelling gameplay, quirky enemies, and unforgettable player experiences, while Edgegap handles the backend complexity automatically.

Or in short, as CEO Amnon Israel puts it:

We strongly recommend them to any studio building online multiplayer experiences.