Customer Stories

Hi-Rez Studios Provides Seamless Gaming Experiences with INAP Bare Metal, Managed Hosting, CDN and Performance IP^® Solutions

Business Challenge

Hi-Rez Studios, a leader in the free-to-play, games-as-a-service industry, deploys its software to users all over the world. The company’s massively popular titles—which include the multiplayer online battle arena game SMITE and the objective-based team first-person shooter Paladins—have been played by more than 70 million people worldwide. Users play these games 24/7, meaning the company can’t afford any downtime. It must also ensure a low-latency environment. The gaming experience must be seamless, or users will move on to other titles.

Solution

Since 2008, Hi-Rez has powered its games via a suite of INAP high-performance infrastructure and network solutions: INAP Bare Metal, INAP CDN, custom managed hosting and the patented, latency-busting network optimization technology, Performance IP^®. Today, 100 percent of Hi-Rez’s ever-increasing gaming traffic is routed through INAP data centers.

Bare Metal is the infrastructure of choice for workloads and applications that demand reliable, always-on performance, like Hi-Rez’s complex gaming architecture. To support new game launches and the global popularity of its titles, Hi-Rez scales its environment in Tier 3-type INAP data centers, with Bare Metal in Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Santa Clara, Dallas and New Jersey, and managed storage in Atlanta.

INAP’s Performance IP service maximizes Hi-Rez’s network potential by leveraging our robust global network and proprietary route optimization engine, resulting in ultra-low latency. Hi-Rez and its gamers also enjoy minimal ping, jitter and packet loss thanks to Performance IP’s enhancement of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Performance IP automatically assesses performance-degrading network issues to create an optimal gaming experience.

Results

• • • Scalable, high-performance global architecture.
    • 33% increase in efficiency over virtualized infrastructure environment.
    • 99.999% network uptime.
    • Ultra-low latency with Performance IP, which makes millions of route optimizations per hour worldwide.
    • Redundant and highly available global infrastructure solution.