Kubernetes provides an amazing toolset for running processes over potentially thousands of machines. However, Dedicated Game Servers for real time multiplayer games, such as Fortnight, Overwatch, etc, have their own challenges that don’t directly line up with the solutions that Kubernetes natively provide. Game Servers are neither stateless (no Deployments), or ordered stateful (no StatefulSets) - but sit somewhere in between the two. They require direct connections (no load balancers), and can’t be turned off once players are connected to them (autoscaling is hard).

In this talk, we’ll discuss and demo the open-source project Agones, developed by Google Cloud Platform in conjunction with Ubisoft. Utilizing Kubernetes native extension mechanisms, it attempts to solve this problem by providing a batteries-included solution for running Dedicated Game Servers at scale on Kubernetes.

Mark Mandel is a Developer Advocate for Google Cloud for Games and founder of the open-source, multiplayer dedicated game server scaling project Agones. Hailing from Australia, Mark built his career developing backend systems for over 20 years and authoring and contributing to several widely adopted open-source projects. When he’s not building infrastructure in the cloud for games, he’s constantly looking for new and interesting things he can do with Docker containers, playing with his dog and reading too much fantasy literature.

Streaming here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8ZpH3UR29Y