Amazon GameLift now supports on-premises hardware with Amazon GameLift Anywhere launch

We are excited to announce the general availability of GameLift Anywhere, a new Amazon GameLift feature that decouples game session management from underlying compute resources. With this release, Amazon GameLift can now deploy and manage dedicated game servers hosted on-premises, in the cloud, or through hybrid configurations. The flexibility to deploy and manage game servers hosted anywhere allows game developers to iterate faster during game development and to migrate to the cloud at their own pace.

In 2016, Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched Amazon GameLift, a dedicated hosting solution that securely deploys and automatically scales fleets of session-based multiplayer game servers to meet worldwide player demand across multiple AWS Regions and AWS Local Zones. GameLift already includes standalone features to support low-cost game fleets with GameLift FleetIQ and player matchmaking with GameLift FlexMatch. Game developers asked us to reduce the wait time to deploy a candidate server build to the cloud to test and iterate their game during development. Customers also told us they often have ongoing bare-metal contracts or on-premises game servers and want the flexibility to use their existing infrastructure with cloud servers.

With the new release, game developers can now integrate hardware anywhere into their GameLift game hosting environment. GameLift Anywhere introduces a compute type called “Anywhere” that is used to register on-premises or cloud hardware with GameLift in a GameLift Anywhere fleet. Anywhere fleets can be mixed-and-matched with fully managed Amazon GameLift EC2 fleets so developers don’t need to run and operate separate game server management software for on-premises and cloud workloads.

With GameLift Anywhere, developers can now:

• Develop games faster – Instantly test and iterate server builds in a local desktop environment while still leveraging GameLift FlexMatch and Queue services.
• Manage hybrid deployments – Deploy, operate, and scale dedicated game servers hosted in the cloud or on-premises, all from a single location.
• Streamline server operations – Reduce cost and operational complexity by unifying server infrastructure under a single game server orchestration layer.

Nitro Games, a Finnish games studio, has been an Amazon GameLift customer since 2020 and has used the service for player matchmaking and managing dedicated game servers in the cloud. Daniel Liljeqvist, Senior DevOps Engineer at Nitro Games said, “With GameLift Anywhere, we can easily debug a game server on our local machine, saving us time and making the feedback loop much shorter when we are developing new games and features.”

Getting started

Check out the AWS News Blog post on GameLift Anywhere to learn more and watch the following video to hear from an AWS for Games solution architect about how to register, compute, and deploy a GameLift Anywhere fleet.

Now available

Amazon GameLift Anywhere is available in all Regions where Amazon GameLift is available. GameLift offers a step-by-step developer guide, API reference guide, and GameLift SDKs. You can also see for yourself how easy it is to test Amazon GameLift using our sample game to get started.