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by rafram 12 days ago
I can only reread your initial comment so many times. You’re still incorrect.

Yes, a small subset of games have downloadable server software; the ones that do are able to do so because it’s self-contained and unencumbered by proprietary components that can’t be redistributed.

Most games don’t, and they won’t be able to.

Licensing restrictions aside, how are you supposed to package a modern microservice-based network of servers into a single package that can be run on consumer hardware? And abstract over the specifics of the cloud environment you targeted so it can be run elsewhere? It’s pretty much a nonstarter.

1 comments

Consider the infrastructure you're talking about. What parts of the game service would need to be implemented with micro services and/or calls to a cloud computing and storage? It would be matchmaking, storefronts, news updates, etc.

Running a single dedicated server on a home computer to play with whatever community you've curated requires none of these. Any sane game server architecture would already be essentially a single executable since you want performance and synchronicity within a single "match" or "world".

You say most games won't be able to release server software. Can you provide an example of a game which could not possibly be disentangled from its cloud architecture? I'm having trouble thinking of any