How the Media Platform brought together World of Tanks players and ISS cosmonauts
- May 31, 2019
- 2 min read
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Try for freeWargaming is one of the leaders in the free-to-play MMO market. With 20+ years’ experience in the gaming industry, this developer has introduced more than 15 game titles to various platforms.
Among these titles are award winning bestsellers like World of Tanks, World of Warships and World of Warplanes.
How the need for broadcasts arose
For over five years, Wargaming have needed to deliver multiple updates for all their online game titles all over the world. They have achieved this using Gcore content delivery network (CDN).
Most recently, Wargaming began to utilize Gcore’ media platform (Media Platform) for uninterrupted online broadcasts on all continents.
The first large-scale experience of cooperation with the Gcore team was the organization of WG Fest festival broadcast in December 2018. We were broadcasting two different streams in Russian and in English. Both signals were presented on all the largest streaming spaces of the planet and TV channels.
Maxim Khvashchevsky Broadcasting Technical Producer at Wargaming
How we brought together cosmonauts and gamers
Streaming from space was a joint initiative of the Russian state corporation Roscosmos and Wargaming.
The stream dedicated to Cosmonautics Day was to be broadcasted in High-Definition, worldwide. As Wargaming already had a positive experience of the streaming technology provided by Gcore, as a trusted vendor, Gcore was utilized as the main infrastructure partner for this unique project.
We had another successful cooperation now, with the World of Tanks special event dedicated to the International Day of Cosmonautics. The Gcore team was able to provide a high-quality continuous signal with the required parameters on all required platforms.
I would like to emphasize the comfort of working with technical support specialists.Maxim Khvashchevsky Broadcasting Technical Producer at Wargaming
As you can appreciate, the dates including April 12 to 15, 2019, was the first time Gcore was tasked to arrange a broadcast from space!
Together, the Media Platform and CDN, brought together World of Tanks players and cosmonauts of the International Space Station.
What was broadcasted from space?
The games began with live greetings from orbit from Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Kononenko, members of the ISS crew. Another cosmonaut, Oleg Artemyev, held an interactive online quiz for tank lovers, with trivia devoted to space and space technologies and prizes awarded for erudite viewers.
Where you could watch the streams?
Festive trivia dedicated to Cosmonautics Day was broadcasted on a specific resource, WG Watch.
Media Platform is a convenient video broadcasting solution providing on-the-fly stream transcoding and adaptive bitrate streaming.
Gcore streaming servers are located across Europe, the Americas, and Asia, connected by global network including 47 points of presence (PoPs). Gcore’ network continues to grow to new regions, year-on-year with the expansion of projects together with Wargaming and many other international clients.
Gcore’ media platform allows broadcasts of video with up to 4K quality, anywhere in the world. Dashboard and statistics are easily accessed using an integrated ‘all-in-one’ control panel.
The main specificity of the project was connected with the need to synchronize with the International Space Station, which makes 16 revolutions around the Earth in 24 hours, and there were four game days ahead.
Our team quickly created an additional software, which allowed to meet this challenge and to continue to broadcast uninterruptedly the special information and entertainment content for three days after the event itself.
The audience was able to watch this stream at WG Watch. In general, the preparation for the project by Gcore took no more than three days, players and viewers were satisfied with the result.Andre Reitenbach CEO of Gcore
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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.
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 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
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