Can I make money off server?

NoxstreakNoxstreak Join Date: 2012-09-21 Member: 160286Members
in Server Discussion
Hi guys,

I am willing to invest some cash into servers but I am trying to figure out if I can make enough money to cover the cost... Could anyone explain the economics of game servers?

Thanks!
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Comments

  • oldassgamersoldassgamers Join Date: 2011-02-02 Member: 80033Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
    If you're server becomes popular. You can in the future add reserv slots. Where the player may make a donation to get a reserv slots. That what other clans do to their server in ns1 :)
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  • GISPGISP Battle Gorge Denmark Join Date: 2004-03-20 Member: 27460Members, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Gold, Subnautica Playtester, Forum staff
    That was exactly what i did whit ABLE.ns
    Donations payed for the server, the website and the ventrillo for a good 3½ years.
    For it to work whit NS2 i think a simelar setup is your best chance. At some point we where actualy banking enough to host 2 more servers.
    (saved enough money for the 1 server up for a aditional year after donations slowly decreased)
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  • ZeikkoZeikko Join Date: 2007-12-16 Member: 63179Members, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester
    You can also buy server hardware, set it up, get it into a data center with a good connectoin and then rent 4-6 gameservers on it (depending on the number of CPU cores). This requires some system administration skills to automate some repetitive and time consuming tasks. Also finding a good data center is essential to provide good service with low cost.

    I think there's a big demand for ns2 server hosting in Europe, not so much in NA. But the big risk in this business is that what if the server code gets optimized so much that normal GSPs can start to host it. Then you've invested a lot of money on a hardware and you're unable to make the money you thought.
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  • NoxstreakNoxstreak Join Date: 2012-09-21 Member: 160286Members
    edited September 2012
    Thanks for the information guys.

    I may end up buying a server depending on Colo pricing. I was thinking of a dell 420 with a Xeon E5 2430 and 16 GB ram. Would this be able to handle 2 VM servers and 1 Web server?

    Thanks again

    Nox

    EDIT: I just called some co-location buildings near me and they want around 100 bucks per month per U. seems a bit much as my 20/20 fiber to my house is 70 a month and the power will only cost 30 bucks a month i estimate.... What are you guys paying?
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  • DghelneshiDghelneshi Aims to surpass Fana in post edits. Join Date: 2011-11-01 Member: 130634Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited September 2012
    You seem to have no idea what kind of hardware NS2 servers require. Your 2.2GHz CPU will not even be able to handle 10 player slots.

    Yes, it's that bad right now.

    Almost all popular (i.e. properly running) NS2 servers run on 4-5GHz i5/i7 processors, though it's getting better with more optimizations coming in via patches. See <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=120731" target="_blank">this thread</a> for more information.
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  • syserrorsyserror Join Date: 2007-08-09 Member: 61840Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
    What <b>Dghelneshi</b> said is correct.

    To add to his reply, the colo prices you are getting are fairly normal (at least $ -> £ and for UK prices). You are paying for: 24/7 Security, Cooling (this is not insignificant), Power (including generator and hot-switch batteries) and Connectivity (good peering and fast speeds -- unless you are on a leased line this will seem very expensive compared to residential and small-medium 'business' broadband -- including fibre).

    Internet connections that are not well placed (network wise, not physically [<i>although that does factor in</i>]) generally cannot compare with data-center links. Adequate power is another important and expensive to provide feature that is often overlooked (or if it is adequately provided, when was the last time it was tested ?). The rest is often something that isn't an issue for a couple servers in your basement/garage but is for expensive kit running critical infrastructure.

    There is a company in the UK that provides cheap colo -- when they started off they had a rack in a space room at their house and a 10MB fibre connection to the premises (back when FTTP was rare and expensive, before even ADSL Max) -- they saved a lot of money which was great, but power was on a residential grid with no backup whatsoever, the fibre connection had no redundancy, poor peering (higher pings and loss), it would have been a prime target for thieves etc.

    It was great for anything non-critical, but you generally get what you pay for.

    <!--sizeo:1--><span style="font-size:8pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>Disclaimer:</b><i> This was a <b>long</b> time ago, they almost certainly <b>don't</b> do this any more and are probably not even the same owners of the company running it, but I'm pretty sure it helped them grow to what they are today</i><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
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  • NoxstreakNoxstreak Join Date: 2012-09-21 Member: 160286Members
    I have read through all of those and it seem the game is poorly programmed... I doubt there will be enough servers at launch... weird that most people are not really running server quality procs just desktop machine with server 2008.

    Thanks for the information!

    Nox

    <!--quoteo(post=1982557:date=Sep 24 2012, 03:41 PM:name=Dghelneshi)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Dghelneshi @ Sep 24 2012, 03:41 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1982557"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You seem to have no idea what kind of hardware NS2 servers require. Your 2.2GHz CPU will not even be able to handle 10 player slots.

    Yes, it's that bad right now.

    Almost all popular (i.e. properly running) NS2 servers run on 4-5GHz i5/i7 processors, though it's getting better with more optimizations coming in via patches. See <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=120731" target="_blank">this thread</a> for more information.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
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  • Soul_RiderSoul_Rider Mod Bean Join Date: 2004-06-19 Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
    People aren't running server quality processors, because server quality Processors aren't good enough.

    I spent 5 years running a Game Server hosting company out of a co-located Data-centre in Berkshire. It cost us 50 quid a month per box, it cost us about 500 per box to build. We started off running 1 box with 4 game servers on it, because we were pretty successful we then expanded to 4 servers eventually. We didn't do anymore than that, even though we certainly had the demand.

    I moved to Amsterdam in 2009 so we ended that project, but even then we used high spec PC boxes rather than server processors, because the server processors do a different kind of work, more multi-threaded and data heavy, oh and PC boxes are cheaper and ultimately far more overclockable :)
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  • NoxstreakNoxstreak Join Date: 2012-09-21 Member: 160286Members
    Great info!

    Thanks :)
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