Rivals of Aether 2 by Aether Studios launched on October 23rd and has quickly garnered praise for its exceptional online play by its community— especially when compared to mainstream titles like Smash Ultimate versus Rivals 2 which was developed by a studio of 8 developers.

But what makes its online experience so outstanding?

Netcode Is Solid, Rollback Is Good, Dedicated Servers Make It Great

Rivals of Aether 2 is the first mainstream game to us Snapnet, created by High Horse Entertainment. It is one of the few netcodes with the features that help developers supports multiple latency hiding and prediction techniques and can be configured to deliver an excellent experience over a wide variety of game genres.

The additional key of SnapNet, which is especially true for fighting games such as Rivals 2, is rollback. SnapNet restimulates the entire game state without requiring strict determinism and without high latency players disrupting the match for everyone else. Seting a fixed amount of input delay or let SnapNet determine the optimal experience. SnapNet can seamlessly tune input delay in real-time to adapt to each player’s unique network conditions.

Now, you may think this is all – but the true “hidden hero” of Rivals of Aether 2 is its use of dedicated (often called “authoritative” server) which is powered by Edgegap’s patented orchestration platform.

The use of Rivals 2’s dedicated server that are deployed at the ideal location for a matches’ players ensures its game server that “authors” the game’s data provide an ideal online experience for a multiplayer game. As proven with a world-renowned AAA studio 1v1 fighting game, Edgegap’s orchestration that uses the world’s largest edge network to ensure:

1. Increase fairness, which is key for a fighting game where each player must be evenly matched in terms of match quality to ensure the game’s experience is appreciated (as proven by player’s response to the Online Game Survey), and;

2. Lower latency, which also ensures a match quality. As noted by the world’s biggest multiplayer franchise, Call of Duty, the factor that matters the most to online play’s experience is latency.

Dedicated servers have additional benefits for the developers of Rivals of Aether 2, which are key insights for any developer looking to emulate their success.

• Dedicated servers are the only networking option to ensure you can author player’s in-game actions and data. As Rivals 2 intends to primarily monetizes the game post-launch through its in-game store, dedicated servers ensure player cannot cheat/hack the game to access the store-locked content like skins, celebration moves, and more.

• Dedicated servers are the only solution to instantly unlock cross-platform (crossplay) game. While Rivals 2 is currently PC only, given its success, it wouldn’t be surprising to see it on console in the future.

Rivals of Aether 2 – Steam’s Next Fest in Numbers

While it’s launch success is still being evaluated (as of the time of writing), Rivals 2’s “free” week during 2024’s Steam Next Fest provides a solid picture of it’s use of dedicated servers to launch and scale with hundreds of thousands of players. Specifically, Rivals 2 had:

• 15 million minutes played total battle time (or 30M, since its primarily a 1v1 game)

• 118,327 players battled inside the game during Steam’s “Next Fest” 7 days event

• 1,002,380 total deployments during the same 7-day period

There’s nothing harder during a game’s big milestones, including free weekends or global launches, than scaling. Scaling is measured by a game server hosting to deploy game server as quickly as possible when requested by players in a match.

Edgegap, over the initial weekend, had an average of 1.2 seconds deployment (which is extremely good) and went even sub-1 seconds amongst its fastest deployments. It literally means the game server was deployed faster than it takes Unreal to load the shaders and game scene. That massively great in comparison to other orchestrator.

Rivals of Aether 2 – Steam Launch in Numbers

Even the most prepared big-budget games struggle time and time again to meet launch day demands. Yet, Rivals of Aether 2, an indie title, rose from 0 to nearly 12,000 concurrent players on launch day without any hiccups—a remarkable achievement.

Thanks to Edgegap’s orchestration, Rivals of Aether 2 reached the quality players expect from AAA studios. It’s a testament to what’s possible when innovative technology and thoughtful design come together.