Amazon GameLift in 2020 – Major update now available in preview

Amazon GameLift, a managed service for session-based multiplayer games that leverages the power and reliability of AWS, enables game developers to deploy, operate, and scale dedicated low-cost servers. Since 2016, some of the largest game companies in the world, such as Ubisoft, Behaviour Interactive, and Bethesda, trust GameLift to maximize cost savings while scaling their multiplayer experiences.

That’s why today we’re excited to announce the release of an update that greatly enhances the flexibility in how you can adopt and use GameLift. Available now in preview, the updated GameLift FleetIQ feature allows you to onboard server workloads to the cloud at your own pace, partially or completely, using your own tools independent of adopting any other managed GameLift features. After hearing from you about how to make GameLift an even better alternative to on-premises deployments, we delivered this update so you can experience:

• Cost savings with minimal latency. You can still experience up to 70% cost-savings compared to existing on-premises deployments.
• Increased flexibility. Reuse your existing game backend management services and tooling without GameLift’s session management layer, giving you more control in moving game sessions to the cloud.
• The reliability of AWS. Since instances run in your account, you can use containers or integrate instances with other AWS services such as AWS Shield and Amazon Elastic Container Service.

GameLift, along with this update, is available in 40 instance types and 15 regions so that you can pick the instance type and geography that is best for your game. Public regions include: London, Ireland, Seoul, Mumbai, Oregon, Northern California, Northern Virginia, Ohio, Canada, Sao Paulo, Frankfurt, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney and Beijing (made available by Sinnet). To learn more, read the blog and check out the documentation.