Case studies

Discover how companies like yours harness the power of the edge with Gcore to revolutionize their business and drive success.

LetzAI rapidly scales AI-powered image generation for global users

Everywhere Inference reduces the latency of our output and enhances the performance of AI-enabled apps, allowing us to optimize our workflows for more accurate, real-time results.Misch Strotz, CEO and co-founder, LetzAIA futuristic tram journey, blending reality and imagination, created with LetzAI. Destination: To the MoonLaunched as a skunkworks project from within Neon Internet, LetzAI is quickly becoming a go-to platform for high-quality AI-generated images. With a mission to democratize and personalize AI-powered image generation, it has emerged as one of the most popular and high-quality options on the market. To support its rapid growth and scale seamlessly, LetzAI partnered with Gcore for advanced AI and cloud infrastructure.Global GPU shortages threaten to derail a new AI image generation ideaIn 2023, Neon Internet CEO and co-founder Misch Strotz was struck by a clever idea: give Luxembourg residents the power to easily generate local images using AI. Within a month, Luxembourg-focused LetzAI V1 went live.Encouraged by strong local demand, Strotz and his team began working on a global version of the platform. The vision? An opt-in AI platform empowering brands, creators, artists, and individuals to unlock endless creative possibilities by adding their own images, art styles, and products. “Other AI platforms scrape the internet, incorporating people and their content without permission. We wanted to put the choice and power in each person’s hands,” Strotz explains.Before long, the team began working on V2. In addition to generating higher quality and more personalized AI-generated images, V2 would drive consistency across objects, characters, and styles. After uploading their own photos and creating their own models, users can blend them with other models created by the community to create an endless number of unique images.However, LetzAI faced a significant hurdle in training and launching V2—a global GPU shortage. With limited resources to train its models, LetzAI needed a reliable partner to help evolve its AI-driven platform and keep it operating smoothly.Finding a trusted, Europe-based AI partnerIn the search for a fitting partner, Strotz spoke to major vendors including hyperscalers and various Europe-based providers. Meeting Gcore’s product leadership team made the decision clear. “It was amazing to meet executives who were so knowledgeable about technology and took us seriously,” recalls Strotz.Gcore’s approach to data security and sovereignty further solidified the decision. “We needed a trusted partner who shared our commitment to European data protection principles, which we incorporated into the development of our platform” he continues.Maximizing AI efficiency by training on local GPUsLetzAI opted for Gcore’s state-of-the-art NVIDIA H100 GPUs in Luxembourg. “This was the perfect option, allowing us to keep our model training and development local. With Gcore, we can rent GPUs rather than entire servers, making it a far more cost-effective solution by avoiding unnecessary costs like excess storage and idle server capacity,” Strotz explains. This approach provided flexibility, efficiency, and high performance, tailored specifically for AI workloads.LetzAI was able to adapt its app to run in containers, configure model training tasks to run on GPU Cloud, and use Everywhere Inference for image generation and upscaling. “Everywhere Inference reduces the latency of our output and enhances the performance of AI-enabled apps, allowing us to optimize our workflows for more accurate, real-time results,” Strotz says.In just two months, LetzAI V2 launched to serve users around the world. And Strotz and team were already developing its successor.Empowering creativity with scalable, high-performance AI infrastructureWith Gcore’s continued support, LetzAI quickly deployed V3. “The Gcore team was incredibly responsive to our needs, guiding us to the best solution for our evolving requirements. This has given us a powerful and efficient infrastructure that can flex according to demand,” says Strotz.Running V3 on Gcore means LetzAI users experience fast, reliable performance. Artists, individuals, and brands are already putting V3 to use in interesting ways. For example, in response to what LetzAI calls its ‘AI Challenges’, a Luxembourg restaurant chain prompted residents to create thousands of images using its model of a pizza.In another example, LetzAI teamed with digital agency LOOP to dress PUMA’s virtual influencer and avatar, Laila, in a Moroccan soccer jersey. According to Strotz, “PUMA had struggled to make clothing look realistic on Laila. When they saw our images, they said the result was 1,000 times better than anything they had tried.”That wasn’t the only brand intrigued by V3’s possibilities. After LetzAI posted V3-generated images of models wearing Sloggi underwear, Sloggi’s creative agency STAN Studios asked LetzAI to generate more images for market testing.Always looking for new ways to support creators, LetzAI also launched its Image Upscaler feature, which enhances images and doubles their resolution. “Our creators can now resolve common AI image issues around quality and resolution. Everywhere Inference is pivotal in delivering the power and speed needed for these dynamic image enhancements,” notes Strotz.Platform evolution and AI innovation without limitsAs its models exceed user expectations worldwide, LetzAI can rely on Gcore to handle a high volume of requests. Confident about generating a limitless number of high-quality images on the fly, LetzAI can continue to scale rapidly to become a sustainable, innovation-driven business.“As we further evolve—such as by adding video features to our platform—our partnership with Gcore will be central to LetzAI’s continued success,” Strotz concludes.

fan.at expands audience reach and boosts subscription revenue by 133%

By expanding our game coverage, we’ve seen a surge in new subscriptions, leading to a 133% increase in revenue within just one quarter, which is a great result. Raphael Hollenstein, Senior Software Engineer at fan.at fan.at is a sports broadcaster and streaming platform for football and handball sporting events. The company’s website and mobile app offer sports fans hundreds of live streams of men’s, women’s, and youth games, plus on-demand videos, personalized feeds, highlights, news, voting, live ticker, player statistics, and match results. Viewers can enjoy live streams and replays of games from major leagues and championships like the Bundesliga, Premier League, and Gold Cup. With video content from 50,000 games played by 15,000 teams per season, fan.at delivers high-volume broadcasts to an engaged and growing viewer base. Lacking scalability to support multi-stream delivery fan.at wanted to meet the growing demand for more game coverage, expanding beyond major national leagues to include smaller regional clubs and junior leagues. The company faced a significant challenge in adding these live streams. “Our previous streaming partner could not support our plans to scale, so we initially brought the technology in-house. This meant that we needed to establish a new streaming setup and supporting infrastructure under tight deadlines,” said Raphael Hollenstein, Senior Software Engineer at fan.at. While the company had automated cameras installed at football and handball venues to record games, it lacked the necessary infrastructure to efficiently ingest, transcode, and deliver multiple streams to its growing audience. This prompted the team to explore external solutions. “When we spoke to providers, many couldn’t offer the functionality we needed, like graphical overlays and sponsor inserts, while others were simply too expensive for managing multiple simultaneous streams. It wasn’t a scalable option,” explained Hollenstein. fan.at turned to Gcore for a solution that could support its current and future growth plans, attracted by features like free encoding, which significantly reduces costs. Gcore offered all the essential functionality, including simultaneous live streaming of multiple matches, video-on-demand (VOD), the ability to add sponsor inserts and overlays, and the option to create and edit video clips using the API. fan.at selected Gcore Video Streaming and CDN due to its high-quality, low-latency performance, scalability, and global reach—all of which were essential for supporting the broadcaster’s expansion plans and meeting the demands of additional streams and a larger audience. Delivering game-changing sports coverage to a global audience fan.at integrated Gcore Video Streaming and CDN into its existing workflow, enabling a smooth transition that strengthened its streaming capabilities without disruption. “The Gcore implementation was seamless, and the platform provides everything we need in one place, from live ingest to low-latency global delivery,” said Hollenstein. “It’s been a game-changer, allowing us to focus on scaling our content without the technical hurdles.” Using Gcore’s fast and flexible CDN, fan.at can deliver large, continuous data streams with minimal buffering and latency for an uninterrupted viewing experience. “With Gcore, we no longer have to worry about transcoding our media,” said Hollenstein. “Gcore’s solution automatically converts video files between formats so that our content is always delivered at the highest quality and accessible to all viewers, regardless of internet stability, bandwidth, resolution, or screen size.” With the right technology foundations in place, fan.at could install over 130 additional cameras at sports venues, successfully expanding coverage of smaller regional club games. The efficient management of these additional streams by Gcore made the expansion process simple and hassle-free for the team. Meeting customer demand for these games unlocked new financial opportunities for the broadcaster. “By expanding our game coverage, we’ve seen a surge in new subscriptions, leading to a 133% increase in revenue within just one quarter, which is a great result,” Hollenstein notes. Elevating live sports viewing experience and fan engagement Fast clip creation is crucial for enriching the game experience and broadening audience reach on social media. “We use the API to create instant highlight videos from live streams, which is exactly what we needed,” said Hollenstein. “We can produce clips almost instantaneously, which is crucial when managing up to 300 cameras during peak weekends.” The ability to create short videos for social media has also helped to grow brand awareness and interaction. “Within four months of implementing Gcore, social media engagement with video content rose by 43%, and video views on Instagram increased by 64%,” added Hollenstein. Gcore enables fan.at to create customizable graphical overlays, superimposing information like scores, player stats, and logos directly onto the footage. This feature offers fans additional context that complements the on-field action and improves the viewing experience. The broadcaster can also insert HTML overlays like sponsor banners, alerts, and a time clock into live streams, enhancing visual appeal and engagement. Streamlining broadcast operations and reducing streaming costs fan.at streamlined operations and reduced costs by consolidating its streaming infrastructure with Gcore’s integrated transcoding and VOD storage solutions, eliminating the need for multiple providers. We’ve seen a 13% reduction in VOD storage costs and an 85% decrease in transcoding expenses compared to our previous providers. Raphael Hollenstein, Senior Software Engineer at fan.at Additionally, Gcore’s automated video streaming and production workflows saved the engineering team 500 working hours over four months, further enhancing operational efficiency. Continued innovation to grow and engage a diverse audience By partnering with Gcore, fan.at has successfully expanded its broadcast capabilities beyond major leagues to include coverage of football games from smaller clubs, reaching a wider audience. The collaboration enabled the broadcaster to meet growing demand, optimize streaming performance, and enhance viewer engagement. Looking ahead, fan.at plans to rely on Gcore to add live commentary, innovate further with video editing, and explore new interactive features to continue delivering high-quality entertainment to an ever-growing audience.

Fawkes Games Thwarts DDoS Attacks for Seamless Gaming Experiences

Founded in 2022, Fawkes Games Ltd is a European indie gaming studio known for publishing popular massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as Shaiya and Last Chaos. The company’s mission is to breathe new life into forgotten games and reignite passion within their communities. When faced with significant cybersecurity challenges, Fawkes partnered with Gcore to implement a robust DDoS protection solution, ensuring exceptional gaming experiences for players worldwide. Rising Popularity Attracts Persistent Cyber Threats Fawkes offers end-to-end game operations services, including hosting, community building, user acquisition, retention, and streamlining user feedback. In 2023, the company faced a series of sophisticated DDoS attacks, resulting in service disruptions and a decline in player satisfaction. The attacks began as persistent short bursts and escalated into vast connection floods, peaking at 2 Tbps. The company’s existing security provider was unable to manage the scale and multi-vector nature of these attacks, which bypassed conventional security measures, causing significant disruption to the company’s operations. “From the moment we went live, our servers were under constant threat. We were bombarded with attacks that overwhelmed our infrastructure and affected gameplay. The attacks demanded a significant portion of our resources, with up to 30% of our engineering time dedicated to DDoS mitigation alone,” explains Nico, Operations Director at Fawkes. The attacks not only strained the company’s resources but also jeopardized its reputation for delivering stable and immersive gaming environments. Tailored Countermeasures to Combat Sophisticated DDoS Attacks Fawkes needed a robust security solution that could handle persistent and constantly evolving DDoS attacks. After evaluating various options, the company selected Gcore as the ideal partner to bolster its security posture. Gcore’s distributed network infrastructure and advanced technologies, including its user datagram protocol (UDP) challenge-response system, aligned perfectly with the team’s requirements for neutralizing large-scale DDoS attacks. “Gcore’s features enabling us to limit connections per IP and implement user challenge protections were exactly what we needed,” comments Ivan, Technical Director at Fawkes. Deploying Gcore DDoS Protection marked a turning point for Fawkes. Gcore developed a tailored defense strategy with protocol-specific countermeasures that were integrated into Fawkes’ infrastructure using a proxy server. The integration process was seamless and efficient, minimizing disruptions and quickly fortifying the company’s defenses. Mitigating DDoS Attacks with Ease and Increasing Operational Efficiency The results were immediate and impactful, both for the company and its global gaming community. With Gcore DDoS Protection in place, Fawkes successfully thwarted multiple botnet attacks. Gcore’s mitigation systems effectively neutralized these attacks before they ever reached Fawkes’ infrastructure, ensuring that services remained flawless and uninterrupted. “Since implementing Gcore, we’ve successfully mitigated massive DDoS attacks without our players experiencing any disruption, underscoring the exceptional performance and reliability of our services,” says Nico. The implementation of Gcore DDoS Protection not only ensured service stability but also marked a significant improvement in operational efficiency at Fawkes. The reduction in time spent on DDoS mitigation freed up valuable resources for game development and community engagement initiatives. “With Gcore, we’ve achieved a newfound stability in our operations, which has undoubtedly enhanced the gaming experience of our player community,” comments Ivan. A Strategic Partner to Stay Ahead of Security Threats The strategic collaboration between Fawkes and Gcore extends beyond immediate problem-solving. Through regular updates and strategic discussions, Gcore proactively assists Fawkes in staying ahead of potential cybersecurity threats. “Open communication with Gcore, including during attacks, provides us with peace of mind and confidence in our security measures,” concludes Nico. Gcore has enabled Fawkes to overcome complex cybersecurity challenges, secure game operations, and reinforce its commitment to providing an outstanding gaming experience to player communities worldwide. Looking ahead, this partnership underscores the critical role of advanced cybersecurity in the ever-evolving landscape of online gaming.

How Sandbox Interactive Uses Gcore’s Cloud for Expanding Albion Online in Asia-Pacific Region

Sandbox Interactive is a Berlin-based game development studio that specializes in creating massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). One of their most popular games, Albion Online, is a fantasy sandbox MMORPG featuring full-loot combat, a player-driven economy, and a classless “you are what you wear” skill system. The game is fully cross-platform, playable on PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, or Android with a single account, and is localized into numerous languages including Japanese, Korean, Traditional/Simplified Chinese, and Indonesian. Albion Online has a global player base, and Sandbox Interactive decided to expand their game to the Asia-Pacific region to offer faster connection speeds and better ping for players throughout Australia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. The Challenge Sandbox Interactive faced a significant challenge when expanding Albion Online to the Asia-Pacific region. The company needed to ensure that the game’s infrastructure could support the high volume of data and traffic generated by players in the region. The company also needed to optimize the game’s performance to provide a seamless experience for players in the region. Additionally, Sandbox Interactive needed a cloud provider that could ensure secure and fast connectivity between different data centers for the seamless synchronization of data across different locations. The Solution Sandbox Interactive turned to Gcore, a leading cloud provider that offers a managed Kubernetes platform to support high-volume critical data projects. Gcore implemented the following Managed Kubernetes solutions to support Sandbox Interactive’s Big Data project. Deployment of Elasticsearch Cluster on Kubernetes in the Gcore Cloud Elasticsearch is a powerful open-source search and analytics engine that can be used to search, analyze, and visualize data in real-time. With Elasticsearch, Sandbox Interactive can store and process large volumes of data generated by players in the Asia-Pacific region, and quickly search and analyze this data to improve the game’s performance. Automated Container Management with Managed Kubernetes Platform Insta-scaling to help Sandbox Interactive easily scale their infrastructure, create new containers, and remove unwanted resources Ability to restart and update containers Continuous monitoring of container status Load balancing for control over the traffic and distribution of resources among the containers Deployment and updating of confidential information and application configurations without changing container images or exposing data Storage and management of confidential information such as passwords, OAuth tokens, and SSH keys The Results By using Gcore’s cloud platform, Sandbox Interactive was able to expand Albion Online to the Asia-Pacific region and offer a seamless gaming experience to millions of players in the region. The new server, Albion East, provides much faster connection speeds, better ping, and lower latency for players throughout Australia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. Additionally, the timings of game and server events, such as territory battles, Crystal League, Faction Warfare, maintenance, etc., are optimized for the region’s time-zones, making the game more accessible to millions of players in the Asia-Pacific region. The partnership between Sandbox Interactive and Gcore is a great example of how cloud providers can support high-volume critical data projects such as the EOSC platform. With Gcore’s managed Kubernetes platform, Sandbox Interactive was able to address their key challenges business challenges: Store and process large volumes of data generated by players Quickly search and analyze this data to improve the game’s performance Ensure secure and fast connectivity between different data centers for the seamless synchronization of data across different locations Additionally, Gcore’s onsite support engineers ensured quick resolution of unforeseen issues. One such issue resulted in a sudden increase in latency in the leased line. The cause was a cut fiber that affected the backbone provider who operates the line. Gcore immediately provided Sandbox Interactive with a second leased line that is operated by a different provider as a fallback solution. Gcore also implemented an automatic fallback to an IPsec tunnel in case the leased line were to suddenly fail completely. Gcore’s support was instrumental in successfully expanding our game to the new region. They were always available to discuss and agree on our requirements in person and provided a dedicated team of project managers and engineers. We highly recommend Gcore as the best choice for anyone seeking reliable cloud services. David Salz CTO & Co-Founder of Sandbox Interactive Sign up for Gcore Cloud

How to provide a reliable infrastructure for the financial market. Your Bourse case study

About Your Bourse Your Bourse is an Estonia-based company founded by the former founder and owner of Alpari Group, Andrey Vedikhin. Your Bourse is a software company that offers trade execution solutions for the retail and institutional MT4/MT5 and crypto brokers as well as data analytics and reporting and risk management solutions. The task Your Bourse offers a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for crypto brokers and traditional CDF/FX brokers. The core product is the Matching Engine, which allows brokers to create their central order book. The Matching Engine matches buy and sell trades, such as if someone is selling 10 stocks of company A for X dollars at the market price and someone else is trying to buy 10 stocks of company A for X dollars at the market price, the Engine will match them to confirm the deal. Another product offered by the company is Liquidity Aggregation, which provides a constant flow of orders into the central order book–Matching Engine. The tool uses FIX API connectors and WebSocket API connectors to aggregate pricing from multiple trading venues such as banks and cryptocurrency exchanges and then stream the pricing to end clients. Brokers can create an unlimited liquidity pool with different routing rules from just a single connection to the venue. As of now, Your Bourse is integrated with all traditional CDF/FX trading venues and several crypto exchanges. Crypto market makers can use the Matching Engine to match trade between various venues, and brokers can also create dark pools using the Engine. Your Bourse also has native integration with two most popular trading platforms in the retail FX and CFD’s market: MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5). These trading platforms connect to the Engine via Bridge or Gateway, take its aggregated pricing data and stream it to their end-users. If an MT4/MT5 end-user wants to trade, they send a buy/sell order back to the Matching Engine, and the order is processed internally or streamed to the Liquidity provider based on the routing rules set by a broker. The connectivity between the trade execution engine and MT4/MT5 is provided through API plugins of MT4/MT5 servers (Bridge and Gateway). For clients who don’t have the resources to host their own MT4 or MT5 trading platforms, Your Bourse offers hosting and administration services for these platforms. Your Bourse was looking for a hosting service who would be able to provide reliable infrastructure for their MT4 and MT5 clients. As a key figure in the financial market, the connectivity speed was also crucial. This is how Your Bourse started partnering with Gcore. The result Your Bourse uses Gcore, most and foremost to host its PaaS components, but also to provide ultra-low latency and secure MT4/MT5 server hosting and a turn-key solution for those who want to quickly launch a MT4/MT5 brokerage. The testing period is over, and we are pleased Gcore is a very reliable partner. In the future, we are planning to move at least half of our infrastructure to Gcore, safe in the knowledge that Gcore’s infrastructure is sufficient to even host our most precious component—one of the fastest matching engines in the world. Andrey Vedikhin Your Bourse Founder, CEO and CTO In 2022, Your Bourse was awarded Best Technology Provider during the Ultimate Fintech Awards 2022 that took place in Cyprus at iFX Expo International. Your Bourse was also recently awarded Best Technology Provider MEA 2023. Why Your Bourse chose Gcore Hosting Tier III and Tier IV certified data centers around the world Variety of configurations and upgrade possibilities DDoS protection 24/7 NOC support Select a server

Infrastructure for billions of gamers around the world: The experience of Photon

Founded in 2004 for mobile, PC, Web, Console, VR/AR, developers use Photon to create games and applications that offer synchronous real-time multiplayer experiences that scale to millions of players. Photon powers thousands of games and applications which are enjoyed by over +1.2 billion users a month. Over 650,000 developers—including some of the world’s leading companies—trust Photon to fuel their real-time experiences, including EA, Disney, Square Enix, Ubisoft, Oculus, Voodoo, RecRoom, VRChat, BandaiNamco and Scopely.The goalEvery day, Photon powers game processes for all major game genres (from action, arcade, and hyper-casual to MMO) for billions of gamers around the world. A truly global infrastructure was required for players to have a positive experience.Publishers expect us to provide a fast, reliable and scalable platform for their multiplayer games, so that their player’s experience is top notch, regardless of country and device.Christof Wegmann CTO & Founder of PhotonThe project requires high CPU and network IO performance, so Photon needs the best available hosting power.They needed an infrastructure that is able to process a huge number of requests and also repel DDoS attacks to preserve the reputation of studios in the eyes of players.After analyzing the market options, the engineers at Photon selected Gcore as one of the main providers of server capacity and DDoS protection.Gcore has a tremendous experience of working with AAA game studios and publishers around the world — from Bandai Namco to Wargaming. We now have several years of positive experience in our cooperation and feel our infrastructure is in good hands with Gcore.Christof Wegmann CTO & Founder of PhotonThe resultsOne of the success reason of Photon as the #1 network engine in the world is the network of trusted partners to help them. The success of the live games depends not only on the gameplay, but also on the connection stability and performance. Gcore servers help Photon to guarantee the perfect connectivity and continuity of their product.With the help of Gcore services, Photon operations team do not need to worry about DDoS attacks, and they can scale the infrastructure fast. This reduces the time for launching new regions worldwide and significantly saves costs.Why Photon chose Gcore Hosting and ProtectionTier III and Tier IV certified data centers around the worldVariety of configurations and upgrade possibilitiesDDoS protection24/7 noc supportSelect a serverSign up for DDoS Protection

How Nitrado brings its low-latency gaming to Japanese and South American markets thanks to Gcore infrastructure

When it comes to the technology infrastructure that supports their operations, gaming industry businesses are unusual. Very unusual. This is because online gaming is one of the few use cases that require more capability than even the great hyperscale cloud providers can provide. Consumers demand seamless, low-latency performance and the best possible experience, and that requires something special. It’s for this reason that Nitrado, an online game server hosting company operates its own global infrastructure. It’s also why, when it needed to expand its business, it turned to Gcore as its cloud partner of choice. Nitrado, which is owned by marbis GmbH, supports a portfolio of approximately 130 games, including the ever-popular Minecraft. The key focus of Nitrado’s 200-strong workforce is to deliver the best possible user experience to customers. To that end, the company works closely with publishers and game developers to secure early access to new games for its online user community. In addition, Nitrado hosts its own gaming infrastructure in third-party data centers, and it often rents dedicated server power to customers to improve their gaming experience. The gaming infrastructure operated by Nitrado runs at a total power of 220,661 GHz and has 1,233,019 GB of RAM storage capacity. Gearing up for growth Nitrado has built a global gaming infrastructure of data centers, internet exchanges, and direct peering links with internet service providers in key locations such as Frankfurt, London, Sydney, Singapore and the USA. Doing so, Nitrado ensures that gaming traffic always takes the shortest possible route to its destination, helping to reduce latency and deliver a great gaming experience to customers. Nitrado has recently entered a phase of rapid growth that requires increasing its infrastructure footprint in a different way. This growth has been driven by the pandemic, which has given a significant boost to the gaming industry. According to Statista, worldwide revenues from cloud gaming amounted to $1.48 billion in 2021, and are expected to rise to around $6.3 billion in 2024. New markets, new challenges Nitrado’s goal was to meet new demand through two new infrastructure hubs in Tokyo and São Paulo. However, in doing so the company faced several challenges. First, it needed to find a rapid way to establish a presence in these markets, which can be challenging to enter due to language barriers and complex legal and bureaucratic obligations. Second, Nitrado needed to ensure that the infrastructure in place at these hubs would be able to deliver the high levels of low latency and performance required to deliver seamless digital gaming experiences. The online, multiplayer cloud-based games provided by Nitrado place a huge demand on hardware, and the highest levels of performance are required to deliver low-latency play. This is particularly challenging during the winter months, when demand for gaming servers increases by an average of 20%. Similar demand peaks can also take place within just 24 hours, and it is essential that Nitrado and its partners can successfully balance loads to deliver that seamless experience. Exacerbating this challenge is the fact that games are often not programmed to work optimally with the supporting hardware. For example, the load of games cannot be distributed across multiple servers without impacting the gaming experience. For this reason, Nitrado configures its own hardware and uses high-performance server models such as Intel® Xeon® E-2388G and Gold® 6348. These offer stable and high clock speeds even under a heavy load. Partnering for growth Given the cultural, legal and bureaucratic challenges of its new target markets. Nitrado opted to work with Gcore, a global cloud infrastructure provider. By partnering with Gcore, Nitrado gained instant access to 150 points of presence across five continents, 15 cloud locations, and 25 data centers with servers. Access to Gcore’s technology and expertise also meant that Nitrado could make the leap to two new continents with ease, safe in the knowledge that all legal and bureaucratic requirements were met. For the Tokyo and São Paulo deployments, Gcore undertook all project management duties, including communication and logistics, securing the necessary paperwork (which was particularly challenging in São Paulo), importing and setting up servers, and securing contracts with local service providers. Gcore thereby ensured that Nitrado’s entry into the South American and Japanese games hosting markets was friction free and rapid, delivering significant time and resource savings. High performance guaranteed The second key benefit of working with Gcore is that Nitrado can deliver the same high user experience to Latin American and Japanese customers it does to the customers it serves through its own servers and data centers. The performance of the hardware combined with the significantly better price-performance ratio of Gcore is the main reason why we do not rent our infrastructure from one of the hyperscalers. Marcel Bößendörfer Managing Director at Nitrado The solution set delivered by Gcore delivers low-latency, high-performance gaming through the following infrastructure services: Bare metal services: To cushion extreme peak loads or to scale at short notice. Bare metal servers are more secure than cloud solutions, as the resources are not shared with other customers. IP transit at all locations: Gcore has a direct connection to high-bandwidth Tier I and II Internet providers in the respective countries. In addition, Gcore is also available as the primary internet connection to ensure that gaming traffic always takes the shortest route possible to provide customers with a good gaming experience. Colocation: Renting space in data centers, including the necessary infrastructure such as server cooling, security and support for the company’s own servers. “With Gcore, we have managed to standardize our global expansion and cover regions where it would have been very difficult to gain a foothold on our own,” says Marcel Bößendörfer. “The cloud provider has the expertise we need in low latency and high server performance. In addition, it knows the needs of a game hoster in expanding our online business worldwide and has the necessary structures for on-site implementation.” Sign up for Cloud

How we provided the infrastructure for the global release of Saber Interactive video games

Saber Interactive is an American video game development and publishing company founded in Florida in 2001. It has more than 20 studios and 2,500 employees worldwide and is part of the Embracer Group.The company’s game titles include Space Marine 2, World War Z, Evil Dead: The Game, SnowRunner, and A Quiet Place.The taskIn April 2019, Saber Interactive collaborated with Paramount Pictures to release a co-op third-person shooter. The plot was based on the 2013 movie about the war of worlds.While predicting the success of the game, Saber Interactive made sure it didn’t disappoint. It required a global hosting network with a worldwide presence.“We have extensive experience in launching various video games, and we understand how important it is to retain gamers with quality service. It’s not only about the excellent and interesting gameplay, but also about the speed of loading and processing operations within the game. That’s why, even before the official release, we chose Gcore as our primary hosting provider for dedicated servers. The company already had vast experience working on infrastructure for such companies as Wargaming, Bandai Namco, and Exit Games, so we put our trust in them.”Game Services Lead at Saber InteractiveThe resultIn the first week of release, the game became the best-seller in the UK (more than 2 million copies in the first month). It entered all sorts of top charts and garnered a huge number of fans around the world. For example, it became one of the best-selling games in all formats in Japan during the first week.Thanks to stable global hosting by Gcore, Saber Interactive managed not only to successfully launch the game, but also to maintain interest in it for years.Why was our Hosting selected?Worldwide coverageTier III and Tier IV certified data centersInfrastructure holding the Guinness World RecordGuaranteed bandwidth of 200 Mbps with no traffic limitReliable DDoS protectionMultilingual support 24/7More about Hosting

How to save 40% on the infrastructure of a multimillion-dollar game: the experience of Sandbox Interactive and Albion Online

Sandbox Interactive GmbH is an independent game development studio, founded in 2012 in Berlin. The company strongly believes that creating their own world and interacting with other gamers are paramount to the gaming experience. Their flagship product is the sandbox game Albion Online.About Albion OnlineAlbion Online is a medieval-style open-world MMORPG.The game allows players to combine armor and weapons to implement different playing styles, explore the world, fight other adventurers in exciting battles, conquer territories, craft items, and build their own homes.The game was officially released in 2017, and in April 2019, it adopted the free-to-play model.Today, Albion Online is the first truly cross-platform game. It is supported on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android and iOS. All players play on one server with a huge and constantly growing world.Server stability, scalability, and effective DDoS protection are paramount for online games of such scale.The GoalThe launch of the free-to-play version has attracted millions of gamers around the world. A game of this format required flawless operation of the infrastructure at all stages, from hosting and protecting servers against DDoS attacks to a content delivery network that would provide the maximum game download speed to users around the world.Already at the launch stage, Sandbox Interactive specialists understood what resources would be required for the successful operation of the project. At the same time, they started using the content delivery network of one of the world’s largest providers.However, monthly CDN payments increased along with the growing popularity of the sandbox MMORPG. At the end of 2020, Sandbox Interactive’s infrastructure specialists started looking for more budget-friendly options.We got used to a high level of service and wanted to get the same thing with the new vendor but for much less money. We needed a reliable and affordable alternative.Robin Henkys CEO of Sandbox InteractiveThe ResultsThe migration from the previous content delivery network to Gcore CDN was quick and painless.We managed to transfer all our resources without any problems. Our users did not notice any changes. Thanks to Gcore, we achieved the results we expected and saved over 40% on CDN infrastructure in a year.David Salz CTO of Sandbox InteractiveTry CDN for freeRelated articles:How we protected Albion Online against complex and massive DDoS attacks

How we deliver World of Tanks and other Wargaming games to users around the world

Wargaming is an award-winning free-to-play online game developer and publisher. Established in 1998, the company has more than 5,500 employees in multiple offices around the world.Over 200 million players enjoy Wargaming’s titles across all major gaming platforms, including the massively popular World of Tanks and World of Warships.Gamers don’t like to waitMassively multiplayer online games should grab player’s attention in the first seconds. If the game doesn’t load or slows down, it will fail. Therefore, Wargaming developers understood that download speed is one of the most important components of a game’s success for a gamer back in 2010, at the stage of launching their flagship project, World of Tanks.In order to keep the interest of the players, it was necessary to provide the Tanks with high quality, reliable, and scalable infrastructure. So more than 10 years ago, Wargaming felt the need for a vendor capable of delivering all their content.How to keep the game popularCreate a quality product.Minimize loading delays for gamers.Balance the load on game servers during peak hours, for example, when loading the next patch.Deliver game content anywhere in the world.What challenge did Wargaming face?Initially, the majority of World of Tanks players were located in Eastern Europe. Accordingly, the first step was to deploy a content delivery network in this market. Global CDN providers didn’t have a developed infrastructure in Eastern Europe and couldn’t provide developers with the necessary service.“When Wargaming turned to us for help, their goal was to reduce the time-to-play—time the end user needs to launch the game,” says Dmitry Samoshkin, Vice President of Products at Gcore. “Without a high-quality CDN, it wouldn’t have been possible to reach this goal in these regions.”The Gcore network was perfectly suited to the customer’s needs.“Specially for Wargaming, we additionally built a P2P network and organized a direct interface with the infrastructure of the largest telecommunications operators,” adds Dmitry Samoshkin.The main advantage of GcoreHowever, Wargaming not only needed a flexible provider with excellent performance, but the vendor also had to be able to handle all peak loads.“One of the first goals we set for ourselves when we were building our own infrastructure was to handle traffic surges that gaming and entertainment companies usually face,” says Dmitry Samoshkin. “For example, traffic during downloads of Wargaming releases grew at times, with peaks reaching 2 Tbps.”Many providers could provide their customers with a maximum bandwidth of only 600 Gbps and cut the limits after exceeding it.It was important for Wargaming that the future vendor doesn’t limit traffic during peak hours. Proposals from other companies didn’t meet the requirements, while the capacity of the Gcore network could easily handle all the peaks.“We can easily withstand the load during the release of the new game patches, which occur once every six weeks and last 3–5 days. The total capacity of the Gcore network of 50 Tbps allows us to cope with any load, no matter how powerful.”Dmitry Samoshkin, Vice President of Products at GcoreThree important additional featuresThe developed infrastructure and large network capacity were not enough for Wargaming. Specially for them, the Gcore team implemented three important additional functions.PrefetchOn average, one World of Tanks update has a size of 1–2 GB. Initially, the update content wasn’t located on the CDN nodes closest to the player but on the origin servers and was requested only at the time of the game’s release. Because of this, a large number of requests went to the origin servers. The Gcore team added a cache warming function feature called Prefetch (configured via the API or manually), with the help of which the content was first transferred from the origins to all cache servers, and the update could be downloaded substantially faster.Origin ShieldLater, an even more convenient feature was implemented—origin shielding. This technology provides additional protection to the origin server from high loads due to the huge number of requests from CDN servers.The main task of shielding is to reduce the number of requests to the origin from CDN servers that interact with the origin server at the time of receiving content.When shielding is enabled, only one intermediate pre-cache server, which is located as close as possible to the region that is important for the user, and not the entire CDN, interacts with the origin. All requests to the content source are accumulated on it. Thanks to this solution, the load on the Wargaming origin server has been significantly reduced.In addition, it allowed us to minimize response times and improve the quality of service for players.Pre-update of patchesThis is a pre-update feature for players who want to play right after the release. All interested gamers have the opportunity to download the necessary files in advance, which allows them to avoid additional downloads on the day of the update release. After the release, the update files are installed immediately, because they have already been downloaded. Thanks to this feature, it was possible to reduce the load on the infrastructure by another 20–30%.Launching new games and expanding into new marketsIn 2013, another game came out—World of Warplanes—and World of Warships followed in 2015. Along with the launch of new products, millions of new gamers from different countries have also appeared.“In 2013, our audience grew significantly in new regions, with products launched in the Americas, Asia, and Australia.”Dmitry Kuryanovich, Head of Maintenance at WargamingIn response to Wargaming’s requests, Gcore specialists installed additional equipment in new markets (in particular, in the USA and Brazil) and strengthened their presence in the old ones.Wargaming and Gcore collaboration todayToday, Gcore has over 800 cache servers in over 80 points of presence on all continents except Antarctica, with the best CDN performance in most European countries.80+ CDN PoPs on 5 continents800+ cache servers5,000+ peering partners50+ Tbps network capacity<30ms response time“Today, all progressive providers of content delivery networks are investing in infrastructure to meet the needs of their customers, and are launching high-value points of presence in regions such as Brazil, Africa, and India,” says Dmitry Samoshkin. “We can say with confidence that Gcore has the widest coverage around the world—from South America to Africa, which not many providers can boast of”.“The IT infrastructure has been one of the key factors in our success. Together with Gcore, we have created a new level—trust me, it will take you years to build a network that can handle millions of players.”Victor Kislyi, Wargaming.netWhy GcoreInfrastructure providers are now moving towards all-in-one solutions, as customers are no longer looking for separate products such as a CDN or hosting. Instead, they want a range of services from a single vendor.To this end, the Gcore turnkey business model allows Wargaming to save time and money while receiving high quality personalized service.“They don’t need to allocate a huge part of their budget for infrastructure, engineers, licenses—we have already created everything necessary,” says Dmitry Samoshkin. “All they have to do is press a few buttons.”That is why Wargaming, along with the Gcore content delivery network, uses Streaming Platform to broadcast significant events, Public Cloud to work on various tasks and DDoS Protection to ensure the availability of its gamesFurthermore, for better performance, together with the CDN, Gcore additionally offers Storage with servers in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Singapore, Miami, and Moscow. This gives an additional advantage and improves the quality of content delivery due to fast caching.We quickly deliver massive games anywhere in the world.We reduce the load on online entertainment servers during peak traffic.We reduce your infrastructure costs.We quickly process customers’ requests for the introduction of new features and the launch of new points.Try CDN for freeTry storageRead more:How we protect Wargaming against DDoS attacksHow the Gcore public cloud helped Wargaming to accelerate product testing and work with partners more efficientlyHow the Media Platform brought together World of Tanks players and ISS cosmonauts

How we protect Wargaming against DDoS attacks

Wargaming is one of the world’s largest publishers and developers in the free-to-play MMO market.Wargaming games’ audience, including the flagship projects World of Tanks and World of Warships, consists of more than 200 million users on all major gaming platforms.The situationIn 2020, the structure of global traffic changed significantly. Our research has shown a dramatic increase in content consumption in the online gaming and entertainment industry. Along with the growing interest in these industries, the number of DDoS attacks targeting infrastructure and game servers has grown.One of the targets of the cybercriminals was our customer, Wargaming.How game development is DDoS’d in 2021In the recent years, attacks have become smarter and more sophisticated.Increasingly, they are directed at web applications themselves, rather than at specific servers (L7 of the OSI network model). At the same time, attackers very often try to imitate legitimate gaming traffic, which makes it difficult to detect and repel such attacks.To prevent an attack and separate legitimate and malicious traffic, the traffic must be received and processed. Therefore, high network capacity and a large number of high-speed channels are the main requirements in the fight against DDoS attacks. If the channels are overloaded, the traffic simply cannot get to the DDoS protection system for subsequent cleaning. In such a case, not only the protected customers suffer, but the entire location.What attack hit WargamingOn February 18, 2021, the Gcore defense systems detected an attack aimed at Wargaming servers.The total volume of the attack was 253 Gbps, and it lasted about 15 minutes. The attackers used the UDP Flood method.What is UDP FloodUDP Flood is distributed, artificially generated traffic. The attacker, as a rule, first studies all the subtleties of the gaming application and then generates UDP packets from fake IP addresses (on average, more than 100,000 unique IP addresses can be used in one attack).How we repelled this attackBy using filter rules to protect against well-known amplification attacks, we deflected some of the malicious traffic at our border routers. We redirected the other part to our cleaning system in order to analyze this traffic deeper and make a more informed decision about blocking.“Attacks with a capacity of 200–300 Gbps are no longer uncommon today. It’s important that the vendor’s cleanup center that ensures customer protection can handle large amounts of traffic with minimal latency. We at Gcore do this by using a distributed server system and balancing traffic between these systems.”Andrey Slastenov, Head of Web Security at GcoreOur method is based on the transfer of a secret key between the client application and the cleaning center, which is guaranteed to separate legitimate and malicious traffic. This way, we ensure the safety of the customer’s infrastructure and the high-quality cleaning of malicious traffic. If a powerful attack of several hundred gigabits per second is detected, traffic is distributed across several servers and several cleaning centers, thus avoiding overloading the server or even an entire server cluster.“As a result, the attack on Wargaming resources was successfully repelled, game server users continued to enjoy uninterrupted service, and the server was available to users all over the world for the whole time.”Andrey Slastenov, Head of Web Security at GcoreHow we keep game servers available during a DDoS attackAttacks are detected and traffic is cleaned automatically in traffic validation mode.The protection is enabled per request.The protection is configured for your infrastructure individually. For maximum efficiency, we analyze your traffic profile and come up with a set of effective measures.We immediately report any traffic anomalies to tech support. We usually detect attacks within 1 minute.If a cleanup decision is made, all inbound traffic is directed through the filtering platform. This results in only clean traffic arriving at your servers via a dedicated channel.How we successfully repel any DDoS attackHuge bandwidth of the Gcore network allows us to process tens of terabits of traffic.Our advanced cleaning system is capable of receiving, detecting, and neutralizing attacks of hundreds of gigabits per second.The comprehensive protection algorithms preclude the possibility of bypassing our cleaning system, even if the attackers use traffic similar to legitimate gaming traffic to attack.Enable infrastructure protection

How we helped an African concert equipment provider go international online: The case of Stage Audio Works

Stage Audio Works is Africa’s largest provider of audio, video and lighting equipment serving event companies as well as large corporations, and religious organizations.The situationSince the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of Stage Audio Works customers have begun moving their events online and are looking for optimal ways to host live conferences, product launches, training events, church services, and concerts.Stage Audio Works’ customers have begun broadcasting for many well-known corporations, including financial, automotive, media, and other successful Fortune 500 companies.Why was the StreamWorks platform launched?In the past, Stage Audio Works customers used public platforms for broadcasting with mixed results.However, given the remoteness of South Africa from the main receiving servers located most often in Europe, it wasn’t possible to establish stable streaming.Stage Audio Works then decided that it was better to give its users the opportunity to conduct stable live broadcasts not only within Africa, but around the world.This is how a new service, StreamWorks, appeared, providing customers not only with equipment, but also with a convenient tool for full-fledged streaming.The taskProviding StreamWorks customers with a convenient and high-quality service required a reliable contractor with broadcast experience and a strong infrastructure around the world, including PoPs in South Africa.“For security and scalability reasons, we decided right away that we wanted toNathan Ihlenfeldt CTO of Stage Audio WorksWhy were our CDN and Streaming Platform chosen?“Gcore provided us with not only quality infrastructure, but also excellent technical support when connecting the service.”Nathan Ihlenfeldt CTO of Stage Audio WorksThanks to our streaming platform and powerful content delivery network, we were able to implement three important additional features for Stage Audio Works:In-memory streaming caching for fantastic video playback performance on all continents.Usage of the streaming platform for VOD storage, which makes it possible to simulate events in real time using the playlist feature.Optimized Origin Shielding for Stage Audio Works servers located in Africa, which protects the origin server from overload. We used to offer pre-cache servers to our customers in Europe, USA, and Russia, but these locations made the customer’s path to the end user longer. Therefore, to ensure the success of the project, we installed an additional pre-cache server in Johannesburg.“We are delighted that Gcore continues to invest in Africa, as it’s one of the few CDN providers that offer advantages in wider markets such as East and West Africa. We look forward to further cooperation with Gcore to deliver a low-latency live broadcast solution for latency-sensitive content.”Nathan Ihlenfeldt CTO of Stage Audio WorksMore about Streaming Platform

12 seen out of 13

Subscribe
to our newsletter

Get the latest industry trends, exclusive insights, and Gcore updates delivered straight to your inbox.