The Studio

Based in Montréal, Canada, Squido Studio is a VR video game development studio that started by developing educational mobile games for clients, reaching more than 1 million players. After the success of their first VR game No More Rainbows, which offered an enthralling adventure in VR, the passionate dev team shifted its focus to the next big things; its F2P social sandbox VR game DigiGods.

DigiGods lets players play, design and socialize in its sandbox experience filled with mini-games and creative potential. Thanks to user-friendly creative tools, players can adjust gravity, manipulate physical elements, and design simulations within minutes to play with friends. DigiGods is constantly updated with new game content and modes. Just from initial launch, it introduced Medieval Madness, No More Rainbow-themed update, Cat Craze, new gunplay with Warzone-themed content, Spells & Mystery related updates… you get the idea!  

The Challenge

As a small studio with ambitious global plans for their F2P social sandbox VR game, Squido Studio faced several critical multiplayer infrastructure challenges to achieve their goals:

• Global Distribution Costs vs. Coverage: DigiGods' F2P model requires reaching players worldwide from launch, but traditional hosting meant choosing between expensive global coverage or limiting launch regions. Key markets like the Asia-Pacific region and Australia were cost-prohibitive, forcing difficult decisions between market reach and budget constraints.

• VR Latency Requirements: Physics-based sandbox gameplay in VR demands ultra-low latency for responsive object manipulation and multiplayer synchronization. VR's reliance on WiFi networking already introduces additional latency challenges, making optimal server placement critical for maintaining the seamless, real-time interactions that DigiGods requires.

• Small Team, Complex Infrastructure: "Operating with a passionate team of around 30 people across all discipline, Squido Studio needed to manage complex multiplayer infrastructure while focusing their limited resources on game development rather than DevOps overhead.

• LiveOps Without Downtime: DigiGods' content-heavy model with constant updates, themed seasons, and new features requires seamless deployment capabilities. Traditional server management would mean downtime during updates, disrupting the social sandbox experience players expect to be always available for its Gen Z-skewing audience.

• Matchmaking Efficiency vs. Player Experience: Balancing server costs with player satisfaction meant dealing with long queue times, wasted server capacity from leavers, and the challenge of starting games with partially filled matches rather than making players wait extensively between rounds.

• Cost Optimization for F2P Model: As a free-to-play game, every server cost matters. The studio needed intelligent resource allocation, backfill capabilities, and flexible scaling to maximize server utilization while minimizing operational expenses.

The Solution – Game Server Orchestration

Edgegap orchestration is built on three major foundations that help studios across their game server hosting. 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. 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). 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.

Combined, this had a material impact on the DigiGods online experience:

• Instant Global Reach: From the moment DigiGods launched, Squido Studio could distribute their game to 615+ locations worldwide at a single price point. This eliminated the traditional cost vs. coverage dilemma, allowing the studio to reach players in previously cost-prohibitive markets like Australia and the Asia-Pacific region without budget penalties or selective regional launches.

• Optimal Server Placement for VR Physics: Edgegap's patented decision-making system automatically selects the closest available server location for each DigiGods match, reducing latency for all players. This is particularly critical for VR gameplay where WiFi networking already introduces additional latency challenges, and physics-based sandbox interactions require real-time synchronization for responsive object manipulation and multiplayer collaboration.

• Automated Infrastructure: The containerized platform automated critical deployment and scaling processes, dramatically reducing the technical workload on Squido Studio's small team. Without dedicated backend developers, the studio could focus on game development while Edgegap handled the complex orchestration of their multiplayer infrastructure automatically.

• Seamless LiveOps Deployments: Edgegap's zero-downtime deployment capabilities ensured DigiGods remained accessible to players during constant updates and themed season rollouts. The platform's automated version management eliminated the traditional downtime associated with content releases, maintaining the always-available social sandbox experience players expect from a LiveOps-heavy F2P game.

The Solution – Matchmaking

Matchmaking, while separate from game server hosting, is key to players' experience and the overall infrastructure's matchmaking system is the one that sends the API call to deploy game servers.

Edgegap's matchmaking system is designed with optimization features that balance player experience with operational efficiency. These capabilities work together to ensure DigiGods players have quick access to games while maintaining cost-effective server operations for Squido Studio's F2P model.

This integration delivered significant advantages for DigiGods:

• Backfill for Cost Efficiency: Edgegap's matchmaking automatically identifies and backfills running games when players leave, reusing available slots instead of spinning up new servers. This maximizes server utilization and directly reduces hosting costs by ensuring every active server maintains optimal player capacity throughout match lifecycles.

• Dynamic Resource Allocation: The matchmaker's custom rule system allows private matches with fewer players to utilize reduced vCPU allocation, resulting in significant cost savings for smaller group sessions. The system also supports lobby pre-grouping, enabling friends to join games together while still benefiting from intelligent backfill optimization to maintain cost-effective server utilization across all match types.

• Reduced Queue Times: Custom matchmaking rules enable Squido Studio to start DigiGods matches even when lobbies aren't completely full, ensuring players experience shorter wait times rather than extended 15-minute delays between rounds. This flexibility maintains player engagement in the social sandbox environment while still optimizing for cost efficiency through intelligent server management.

• Seamless Update Management: Edgegap's automated release scheduling ensures smooth transitions between DigiGods themed seasons and content updates, while lightning-fast live support during updates provides immediate assistance when needed. This combination allows Squido Studio to maintain their LiveOps-heavy release schedule without disrupting player experience or requiring extensive internal coordination during critical deployment windows.

Conclusion

Together, Edgegap's orchestration and matchmaking solutions let DigiGods reach players worldwide while keeping costs optimized for what would have been an expensive type of game to operate.

Yet, the combination of global distribution, optimized performance, smart cost management, and automated updates allowed Squido Studio's team to operate an ambitious and complex multiplayer game at scale.

By solving the usual trade-offs between global reach and budget constraints, Edgegap gave DigiGods the performance VR players need and the cost-effectiveness that helps their F2P model work.