Game Industry Startup Manages Growth by Controlling IT Costs

High-level bullet points
•    Managing rapid user growth and increasing data complexity.
•    Leveraged OVHcloud servers for scalability and security.
•    Achieved strong ROI with affordable, high-performance infrastructure.
 

Client

BattleMetrics is a unique small business that offers a comprehensive suite of services tailored to online multiplayer game server administrators and players. Their standout features include an administration tool using Remote Connection over Network (RCON), robust server and player tracking capabilities, and a player database that efficiently identifies banned players.

The management team came together as a group of server administrators who had firsthand experience in managing some of the biggest games globally. They recognized the limitations in tracking their communities and servers. In 2014, they decided to bridge that gap by starting a new company, BattleMetrics. They take pride in offering some of the most accurate and reliable data in the market, a testament to their expertise and commitment. 

Challenges

BattleMetrics started with an AWS Three-Tier Architecture for development and used it until they ran out of account credits. Then, they switched to a single OVHcloud Eco     Range Server. In June 2016, they released RCON for Arma and Ark: Survival Evolved. “It started selling like hotcakes,” said Jonathan Hordos, Member/Manager for BattleMetrics. “We were acquiring users at a rapid pace, and their data needs grew and became more complex.” Next, the company experienced a surge in traffic as new games were released, including the launch of the game Valheim, a multiplayer survival game world inspired by Norse mythology. BattleMetrics responded by adding more OVHcloud machines.

They considered other cloud providers for their geolocation, but those companies couldn’t match OVHcloud’s quality and price. “One company wanted us to pay $200 per month per server running at half the speed of OVHcloud,” Hordos added.

Solutions Delivered

Today, BattleMetrics relies on OVHcloud to maintain a persistent connection with customers while staying on budget. They use 25 OVHcloud Bare Metal Servers along with five Virtual Private Servers (VPS) as proxy servers to run external APIs. Of those bare metal servers, three 8TB archive servers hold near-term data in storage before they offload it into deep cold storage. Their Bare Metal Servers also include five powerful servers in the Advance 3 range to run ClickHouse, a fast open-source column-oriented database management system.

BattleMetrics relies on OVHcloud for failover, backup, recovery, and security. “Our connection managers and public-facing website do get hit, so OVHcloud’s DDOS protection and firewalls work out very well for us” notes Hordos.

Results, ROI, and Future Plans

BattleMetrics praised OVHcloud’s affordability, quality, processing power, and data protection. “We’re quite satisfied with ROI,” said Hordos. “OVHcloud has the best value, and they are even better than co-location.” BattleMetrics considered alternatives such as co-location and building on-prem but found it would have been more expensive than the prices they were paying for renting OVHcloud hardware.

Hordos expressed satisfaction with their current infrastructure, noting that BattleMetrics is content with their setup but will consider upgrading as they grow and require additional servers.