Edgegap vs Unity Multiplay
Choosing the right game server hosting solution is a critical decision that can significantly impact player satisfaction and your game's overall success. As you weigh your options, two companies are likely to come up in your research: Edgegap and Unity's Multiplay.
While both offer game server orchestration solutions, they differ substantially in their approach to initial setup, connectivity, performance, scalability, and pricing. In this comprehensive comparison, we'll delve into these key aspects to demonstrate why Edgegap stands as the superior choice for game developers and publishers seeking to elevate their players' experience.
Initial Setup
Setting up your game servers with Edgegap is a straightforward process.
With easy-to-use APIs and SDKs, you can get your game up and running in no time. Comprehensive documentation is available to guide you through each step, ensuring a smooth setup experience.
While Multiplay also offers setup guides, the process can be more complex and time-consuming, since they require configuring multiple steps to end up with a final deployment. The documentation may not cover all the nuances you might encounter, making the initial setup potentially challenging.
Products
Edgegap offers every game servers solution for any game types.
Authoritative servers are the golden standard for gaming, The ultimate level of control, quality & performance; ideal for games that require perfect player experience. Like Hathora, Edgegap offers the option to add Bare Metal for Hybrid orchestration.
Distributed Relays (or “Network of Relays”) are a flexible solution that improves on limited peer-to-peer networking.
Fleets are automated, self-optimizing global server management for persistent instances. The Session Manager is available too.
A no-code, fully managed matchmaker that's highly scalable and is the sole matchmaker with latency-based rules.
Multiplay has container-based game server orchestration too, albeit using traditional centralized databases that introduce latency to the experience. As part of it's overall ecosystem, it offers Unity's Lobbies, alongside a fleet manager.
Performance - Latency Reduction, Scalability & Resilience
Edgegap prides itself on having a patented orchestrator and built the world’s largest edge network to deploy game server across 17+ cloud and bare metal providers as to be the only platform to deliver meaningful latency reduction for players globally.
Built from the ground up to provide a multi-tenant environment. Each studio can manage multiple productions within a single, geographically distributed, and highly available environment. This design minimizes overhead and reduces the need for extensive engineering and resources.
Edgegap’s platform can support the deployment of 40 game servers per second, sustained for 60 minutes. Stacking 2 instances of our platforms allows you to manage as much traffic as Fortnite had during their peak launch (100 req. per seconds).
Additionally, as proven by a case study with an unnamed AAA studio (one of the world’s largest), despite that large game studio having massive resources that allowed it to have a larger number of locations than most game developers could hope for (read: more than what even most studios would be able to afford!), by using traffic from 600,000 transactions and comparing the results with a AAA studio’s current architecture, Edgegap demonstrated an average latency reduction from 116 milliseconds to a drastic 48 milliseconds. On top of that, 78% of the transactions had a latency below 50 milliseconds, compared to only 14% without the Edgegap solution.
Finally, Edgegap’s platform has been running live 24/7 for the past three years, maintaining over 99.99% availability.
Multiplay's traditional cloud-based approach means that players might connect to data centers that are geographically farther away, resulting in higher latency and a less optimal gaming experience. What’s more, Multiplay is very vague in their region definition, offering only “Europe” for example as a region, without saying if the server will be run in Spain or Poland, which is a huge difference geographically, and thus also in terms of player experience.
Multiplay's apps are reported to be unstable by it's community, including their API endpoints. It also lacks the resiliency that comes from having a highly distributed pool of servers like Edgegap.
Scalability
Scalability is built into the core of Edgegap's services. Whether you're dealing with a few hundred players or scaling up to millions, Edgegap's infrastructure is designed to handle it seamlessly through horizontal distribution.
Multiplay does offer scalability within the confines of traditional cloud and bare-metal servers. As Multiplay is based on a fleet manager, it means that rapid scaling can be more challenging since servers can take up to 15 minutes to boot when requested. Even if a server is available, deployment of the game server itself has been reported as very long, with a terrible "cold start" of 16 seconds to boot a server when a request is done.
Platforms & Adoptions
Edgegap supports studios developing mobile, PC, VR, WebGL and console games across various genres, and with features unique to certain genre – namely sessions & fleets.
In terms of games, Edgegap currently manages live games from AAA titles to indie projects alike. Current AAA games running on Edgegap includes (as of writing) PAYDAY 3 by Starbreeze, Six Days in Fallujah by Highwire Games, 7 Days: Blood Moon by The Fun Pimps. Case studies for certain of these games are available to read.
Over 450 studios have utilized Edgegap platform in the last quarter (as of writing). It manages hundreds of thousands of game servers and players each day.
Multiplay, thanks to the integration directly inside the Unity ecosystem, boast Apex Legends and Marvel SNAP as clients.
Price
Edgegap has a clear, transparent pricing that is solely based on usage - $0.001/min. per Dedicated vCPU (which is fractionable) and $0.10/GB of monthly Network Egress as of 2024. For studios with live traffic, it offers volume discounts. Making it a cost-effective solution for both small indie developers and large enterprises.
Additionally, Edgegap has managed cluster tiers for managed infrastructure with clear “per-minute” pricing that allows developers to run services like a matchmaker, CDN, databases, and more.
It does not require a commitment, nor has upfront costs.
Multiplay's pricing is also based on a pay-as-you-go model, but their fleet manager will often launch idle servers that are waiting for players to connect, which creates extra costs based on unused resources. Also, Multiplay's total cost adds up quickly - having gane servers in regions everywhere is expensive, as Multiplayer requires around 6 to 7 servers in each region that is running (and therefore billed) even if there's no traffic. Which, over time, becomes expensive.
Breaking it down, Multiplay's pricing much more complex, as it breaks down server usage across three aspects - namely hardware (CPU Core: $0.038 per hour), memory (RAM $0.0051 per GB per hour), the OS layer (0$ for Linux, but $0.046 per hour for Windows). Then, it adds network (Egress) fees of $0.14 per GB alongside Storage at $0.2 per GiB per month. Making estimates challenging.
Switching from Multiplay to Edgegap
Edgegap has detailed documentation that highlights the process to switch from Multiplayer to Edgegap. In summary, you can expect the following steps:
Remove references to Multiplay from project
The first step to switch to Edgegap Arbitrium is to remove the code that initializes the Unity Gaming Services for your server, see the template in the documentation for more details.
You should also unlink your project from the Unity dashboard under
Edit -> Project Settings -> Servicesif your game is made with Unity.
Containerize your game server
Push your container on a repository
You will have to push your container on a repository. You can use Edgegap's private repository or any other option.
Create an Application on Edgegap
Now that your container is on a repository, you will have to create an Application on Edgegap Arbitrium; This Application will represent your game sever.
You need to add the same
portas your Dockerfile to your app version, as well as link the image you just pushed on a repository in theContainersection. This is also where you can add someEnvironment Variablesspecific to your app version, much like the Configuration Variables in the Build Configurations on Multiplay.With only these settings, you can now deploy your server on demand for your players!
Head-to-Head Comparison
Edgegap
Unity's Multiplay
Leverages edge computing through the world's multi-cloud network for optimized latency and performance.
Traditional cloud-based game server hosting in the Unity ecosystem, hosted by a third party public cloud.
Distributed edge computing deployments nearest to players to lower latency & improve multiplayer experience.
Centralized cloud-based servers.
Extensive global distribution with over 17+ providers with 615+ locations worldwide.
Limited to 5 regions.
Pay-as-you-go by the minute, paying only for active use and traffic, with precise costs calculations.
Pay-as-you-go per CPU core, plus Egress ("Network") and Storage.
Plugins for native support within the Unity & Unreal editor, and support for Godot, Cocos. Soon available for Bevy.
Focused on the Unity ecosystem, with some features available for Unreal
Up to 14M CCCU with dynamic rapid-scaling of 40 deployments per seconds for 60 minutes sustained.
Vertical scaling vulnerable to outages and DDoS attacks
Comprehensive documentation, dashboard, and 24/7 support for clients.
Documentation and minimal support on Unity forums.
"One click" plugins for major game engine (Unreal, Unity), alonside seamless SDK/API integration. Video tutorials for major engine, netcodes & more.
Multi-stage integration process with build, configuration, fleet management setup.
Optimized, low-latency network due to the world's largest edge computing network built by Edgegap.
Standard cloud networking.
17+ providers, including public cloud and Bare Metal, for multi-cloud to ensure automatic rerounting of traffic for the ultimate resilience.
Standard cloud infrastructure, no resiliency to localized issues.
