If you're evaluating dedicated server hosting and orchestration solutions, you're probably already dealing with the tradeoffs: how much infrastructure you want to own, how much time you're willing to spend maintaining it, and how it holds up under real player traffic.
AccelByte Multiplayer Servers (AMS) is a dedicated game server hosting and orchestration platform that takes that entire layer off your team's plate. You keep your game server and session logic. AMS runs everything underneath it.
This post breaks down what that actually looks like in practice and whether it’s the right fit for your setup.
What AMS provides
You own your game server and whatever session or matchmaking flow you’re already using. AMS runs everything underneath that layer so your servers can scale, recover, and operate in production without needing constant attention.
At a practical level, that means:
What stays with your team is everything that’s actually game-specific:
Everything else that usually turns into ongoing infrastructure work runs as part of AMS.
Core Benefits for Multiplayer Game Studio
If you’re evaluating solutions, this is the part that matters: what you actually get day-to-day once it’s running. AMS gives you the core infrastructure layer — scaling, reliability, observability, and cost control — without your team having to build or operate it.
AMS maintains a pool of ready-to-use servers in each region based on your buffer. When a match forms, a server is already available. When a server is claimed, a replacement starts automatically. When traffic drops, excess servers drain cleanly.
There's no manual intervention, no reactive scaling fixes, and no one watching dashboards at odd hours. You set the target. AMS keeps it stable. After launch, you tune it based on real traffic data.
Server failures are handled by the system. Crashes trigger automatic replacement with exit reasons logged. Unresponsive servers are terminated and replaced on timeout. VM-level failures trigger new capacity provisioning.
AMS runs under a 99.9% production SLA, with optional support tiers if you want faster response guarantees. When something does go wrong, the data is already there — logs, crash artifacts, and diagnostics are retained automatically.
The 99.9% SLA isn't just a number, we validated it by stress testing at 1M concurrent players.
You don't need to set up logging pipelines or monitoring stacks just to understand what's happening. Claim failure rate shows if scaling is keeping up with demand. Grafana dashboards surface crash trends, scaling behavior, and regional performance. Per-region and per-instance cost breakdowns show where your spend is coming from.
You can stream logs from live servers directly in the Admin Portal, without SSH or external tooling.
Studios can start fully on cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) and scale across regions without upfront commitment. Once traffic stabilizes, you can shift predictable load to bare metal and keep cloud servers for spikes without changing how your game runs — one fleet view across cloud and bare metal, no manual routing or infra split to manage.
This is how AEXLAB optimized VAIL VR, reducing server costs by 46% while maintaining player experience. For a deeper look at how studios think through the cloud vs. bare metal decision, this post on hybrid multiplayer hosting covers the tradeoffs and when the shift makes sense.
Shipping a new server build doesn't need maintenance windows or player disruption. Blue-green deployments let you shift traffic to a new fleet cleanly. Canary rollouts let you validate changes before full rollout. Both are handled through configuration, not code changes.
Integration and Development Flow
At a high level:
AMS supports Unreal, Unity, and custom engines, and integration is typically completed in 1–2 days.
Once integrated, here’s what the session claim flow looks like:
AMS can work on its own as a dedicated server provider for games using EOS, Steam, or any existing backend. Integration with AccelByte Gaming Services (AGS) Session service handles the claim-and-connect flow automatically without extra code.
AMS also includes tools to speed up the dedicated server development loop:
What it costs
Studios pay for VM instance hours while servers are running, plus egress per GiB. There is no charge for data transfer in. Per-hour rates vary by instance family, size, cloud provider, and region. The main cost drivers are
How AMS compares
This comparison breaks down key aspects of AMS, Edgegap, AWS GameLift, and a self-managed solution to help you evaluate which option best fits your needs.
A few things worth noting:
If you're specifically moving off Hathora as they are shutting down, this migration guide maps the concept and API differences directly.
Studios already running on AMS
AMS is used in production by studios of all sizes, from small teams to live games operating at scale:
Studios can also request a demo to discuss their setup before diving into integration.