Amazon GameLift Servers player gateway
Amazon GameLift Servers player gateway is a relay-based network that routes UDP traffic between game clients and game servers hosted on Amazon GameLift Servers. Player gateway provides proactive DDoS protection by validating traffic before it reaches game servers, rate limiting player traffic, hiding game server IP addresses from the public, and providing updated endpoints when relay endpoints become unhealthy. This feature helps protect your game servers from volumetric attacks with negligible added latency.
Player gateway is provided at no additional charge when you use Amazon GameLift Servers. It requires game servers to run on Linux-based Amazon GameLift Servers Managed EC2 fleets or Container Fleets. You must enable player gateway during fleet creation and update your game client and game backend to use this feature.
Key benefits
Player gateway provides the following security and operational benefits beyond the baseline DDoS protection:
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Hide game server IP addresses – Game clients connect through relay endpoints instead of directly to game servers, hiding your game server addresses from the public.
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Validate traffic – All traffic through player gateway requires a player gateway token, allowing only traffic from authenticated players to reach your game servers.
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Dynamic endpoint replacement – When relay endpoints become unhealthy, Amazon GameLift Servers quickly replaces the endpoints and provides updated healthy endpoints on the next call to refresh player connection details.
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Distribute player traffic – Relay endpoints vary across players, reducing the impact of a single unhealthy relay endpoint to other players within the same game session.
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No additional cost – Player gateway is included at no additional charge with Amazon GameLift Servers.
Prerequisites
To use player gateway, you need the following:
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Game servers running on Linux-based Amazon GameLift Servers Managed EC2 fleets or Container Fleets.
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Player gateway enabled during fleet creation.
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Game client and game backend updated to use player gateway tokens and relay endpoints.
For details on how player gateway works, see How player gateway works. To get started with integration, see Enable player gateway on fleets and Integrate player gateway into a game.
