AWS Game Tech - How Are Games Customers Running on AWS?

The June virtual meetup took a different direction with a focus on AWS Game Tech. This was the second online event organized across all Nordic AWS User Groups, hosted on Amazon Chime. Arni Birgisson, Game Tech Developer Advocate at AWS, presented on “AWS Game Tech – How are games customers running on AWS?” With 74 attendees, the topic clearly struck a chord – Finland has a thriving gaming industry, so the intersection of games and cloud was a natural fit for this community.

Arni covered how game studios use AWS services for everything from game servers and matchmaking to analytics and live operations. He went into detail on GameLift for dedicated game server hosting, FleetIQ for leveraging Spot instances to reduce costs, strategies for global deployment, and building a game analytics pipeline. The practical examples of how real game companies architect their infrastructure on AWS made the session especially valuable.

Finland being home to companies like Supercell, Rovio, and Remedy made this topic especially relevant. Many attendees either worked in the gaming industry themselves or were curious about the unique technical challenges that come with running games at scale. The real-time nature of multiplayer games, unpredictable player spikes, and the need for global infrastructure create interesting architectural problems.

The Q&A after Arni’s talk was one of the liveliest we had seen in the virtual format. People wanted to know about cost optimization for game servers, how to handle sudden traffic spikes during game launches, and the trade-offs between managed services and custom solutions.

It was a refreshing change of pace from the more enterprise-focused meetups, and it showcased the breadth of what you can build on AWS. The Finnish game development community and the AWS community overlapped more than many people realized, and this event helped bridge those two worlds.