Amazon GameLift Introduces Backfill Functionality to FlexMatch, the Dynamic Matchmaking Service for Multiplayer Experiences

Today, Amazon GameLift introduces backfill functionality for FlexMatch, a powerful matchmaking service that enables you to match players together based on rules you define. Whether you choose to build your matches based on player skill, latency, or some other custom criteria, FlexMatch allows you to build robust and flexible matchmaking pipelines to suit your desired gaming experience.

With the new backfill capabilities, FlexMatch now finds players to join a game session that is already in progress, using the same custom criteria used to populate the original game session. This ensures that when a player drops from an existing multiplayer session, you can backfill the empty slot with the most appropriate new player for that match and deliver a gaming experience that is always fast, full and fun for your players.

Amazon GameLift’s FlexMatch lets you configure custom matchmaking rule sets so you can automatically group players together in a way that strikes your ideal balance between match quality and player wait time. FlexMatch automatically routes grouped players into a game session queue, which places the match in the AWS region that best balances low player latency and high server utilization. To ensure players are efficiently placed into game sessions, you can also configure FlexMatch to automatically expand matching criteria if wait time crosses a custom threshold so that players can quickly join the next best game.

Amazon GameLift is a dedicated game server hosting and matchmaking solution for games. It is available in 14 AWS regions and supports all major game engines including Amazon Lumberyard, Unreal Engine, Unity, and custom C++ and C# game engines. To learn more, please visit aws.amazon.com/gamelift.

More useful resources:
FlexMatch Release Notes
Get Started with Amazon GameLift
Download the Amazon GameLift Server SDK
Amazon GameLift Developer Guide