The Studio

Birch Games is a mobile gaming company based in Istanbul, where a focused team comes together to create fun, memorable games for players around the world. Their work is built on creativity, teamwork, and the joy of making something special.

Their title, Kickoff Tactics, is a competitive football card battler where real players, smart tactics, and fast PvP come together. The game is officially licensed by FIFPro, which means players collect, upgrade, and play with over 400 real football players drawn from 20 national teams. Matches are real-time 1v1, last around five minutes, and reward formations, zone control, and tactical decisions over grind. No energy systems. No timers. No ads. Players climb from the Rookie League to the Summit League across seasonal events, with each season bringing its own roster of cards to chase.

For a game carrying an official FIFPro license and a global, competitive PvP audience, the multiplayer experience has to hold up everywhere, every time.

The Challenge

Birch Games set out to solve a problem that trips up many multiplayer teams: building one infrastructure model that handles both predictable and unpredictable traffic well.

On the predictable side, they wanted real control. That meant running private fleets on machines matched to their own requirements, rather than accepting whatever a generic host provided. But a steady baseline is only half the picture. They also needed to absorb sudden, unexpected traffic increases without keeping large amounts of idle capacity sitting around and burning budget.

Deployment speed was its own challenge. In a real-time PvP game, slow server spin-up directly threatens the player experience and the team's ability to react to demand. On top of that, any solution had to fit their existing setup. Birch already used a third-party matchmaker, so compatibility with external matchmaking was non-negotiable. Finally, they wanted granular control over server resources to avoid over-provisioning and run their infrastructure efficiently.

As Bulut Karabıyık, Head of Development at Birch Games, framed it:

"One of our main challenges was building a flexible infrastructure model that could handle both predictable and unpredictable player traffic."

The Solution: Hybrid Orchestration

Edgegap's hybrid orchestration is built for exactly this split between steady and spiky demand.

For predictable workloads, Birch Games runs egress-free Fleets: a private pool of servers on the machine specifications they choose, giving them the control they wanted over their core infrastructure. When demand climbs beyond that baseline, Edgegap's regionless cloud picks up the surge automatically, deploying on-demand across 615+ locations worldwide. Those spikes can come from anywhere. A major tournament, a seasonal event, a marquee match, or a marketing push can all send traffic upward, and the model is ready for it without forcing Birch to pre-pay for idle machines.

This is the heart of why the setup works for them:

"Edgegap helped us implement a hybrid infrastructure model that fits our traffic patterns. We use private fleets to handle our predictable workloads with the machine specifications we need, while Edgegap's cloud infrastructure allows us to handle unexpected or temporary traffic increases seamlessly."

Speed matters just as much. Edgegap deploys game servers in 1-3 seconds, so Birch can move quickly and keep matches reliable even as demand shifts in real time.

"One of the biggest advantages we see with Edgegap is the speed of deployments. Being able to deploy game servers quickly allows us to move faster, respond to operational needs, and provide a more reliable experience for our players."

Crucially, none of this required Birch to rebuild what already worked. Edgegap provides its own matchmaking, but it also supports external matchmakers, so Birch's existing third-party system slotted in without changes.

"Our current matchmaking system works seamlessly with Edgegap, allowing us to benefit from Edgegap's infrastructure without changing our existing architecture."

Then there is efficiency. A five-minute mobile football match needs to be light on server resources, and Edgegap's fractionable vCPU allocation lets Birch match resource usage to what a match needs rather than over-provisioning. Paired with usage-based pricing, where studios pay for real compute usage rather than reserved capacity, that fine-tuning turns directly into lower hosting costs.

"Features such as granular vCPU allocation allow us to fine-tune resource usage and improve infrastructure efficiency by allocating resources based on our actual requirements."

Conclusion

Birch Games wanted infrastructure that was always ready, whatever the traffic, and never wasteful when things were quiet. With Edgegap's hybrid orchestration, they got both: egress-free Fleets holding the line on predictable demand, the regionless cloud absorbing every spike, fast deploys keeping real-time PvP sharp, and granular allocation keeping the economics of a mobile title healthy.

That leaves the team free to do what they do best, which is build a fun, fiercely competitive football game and let Edgegap handle whatever the player count throws at it.