Facepunch Server Hosting (Private Cloud)

[Jake-Rich]

TLDR: Offering an integrated hosting platform makes servers cheaper and something you don't have to think about.

Similar to Roblox, Facepunch could offer a private cloud for S&box servers. This gives any developer the power of a multi-region auto scaling cluster for a very low price (or potentially included with purchase of the game)

Security would be trivial as the game servers would enforce the same access list as the clients. Server owners who don't wish to conform to these restrictions could still host their servers themselves.

There would be sane cpu/ram limits per server but they could be raised upon request or by paying for the extra usage.

TOS only allows servers for their games (no sbox servers that mine BTC or anything silly)

Dedicated hardware would handle normal usage. spikes would be offloaded to AWS / GCP / etc so users and developers don't notice. If this raises expenses significantly there could be a "surge charge" to recoup cost and/or more dedicated hardware purchased to compensate.

If it is not feasible for FP to manage it themselves, they could contracted it out with small hosting fees to recoup the price.

This would obviously be the biggest boost for developers... however it also allows the most popular games to rise to the top, not "the most popular games that also have enough servers". It would also increase the experience of users when servers 'just work'.

Look forward to the discussion.

[garrynewman]

It might be something to look at in the future, once our network system is fleshed out. It makes sense to be able to spawn instances in the cloud for games.. but we'd have to work out how that gets paid for, and if it's by us how much that ends up costing us.

I don't particularly like the idea of restricting who can host a dedicated server.. especially if it's just to fill our pockets.. but at the same time it isn't really time to decide yet.

[Jake-Rich]

There wouldn't be any restrictions on who can host dedicated servers, you just wouldn't want to if was streamlined enough.