Written by: Jordan Sprogis
Edited by: Lillian Castro
Reviewed by: Cristian Lopez
TL; DR: From Minecraft to Palworld, multiplayer games bring in millions of players monthly. Gaming is not only a means of relaxation but also a platform for socializing and connecting with friends worldwide. As a prominent game server hosting provider, Nitrado skyrockets to the top with low-latency services and advanced security technology. Raphael Stange, the CEO of Nitrado, emphasizes the provider’s commitment to creating a secure, robust, and enjoyable environment for the thriving community of multiplayer gamers.
If I had a penny for every time my husband complained about lag while playing Apex or Overwatch, we would not be renting a home; we’d live in a mansion. We assumed that our basic internet, while fine for work-from-home tasks, simply couldn’t keep up with the demands of gaming.
Frustrated, we initially pointed fingers at our internet provider. But after a bit of research, we realized the solution wasn’t in switching providers; it was about finding a reliable game server. Enter Nitrado: By hosting our games on its robust servers, we realized we could finally say goodbye to lag.
Nitrado is a game hosting platform that hosts popular multiplayer games like Minecraft, ARK: Survival Ascended, Palworld, DayZ, Farming Simulator 22, and Valheim with low latency, high security, and affordable pricing.
“Minecraft was the first hugely successful title that made it very appealing to host a private game world where friends can be together, and ARK, Rust, and DayZ have defined the survival game genre as we see it today,” said Raphael Stange, CEO of Nitrado. “Still, they also clarified that game server hosting is a challenging endeavor — games like Minecraft and ARK have very different requirements that must be fulfilled on a technical level.”
That technical level is exactly where Nitrado soars. Nitrado is your go-to game server hosting provider for some of the world’s most popular multiplayer games without compromising on speed or price.
What Gamers and Developers Are Looking For
As with any item or service, a product has to answer a need. Raphael believes the need in the game hosting industry is consistent: Gamers are looking for easy setup and configuration without compromising protection and security.
“They don’t want to deal with configuration files; they want a reliable service backed by cutting-edge hardware to ensure a smooth gameplay experience,” Raphael said. “They want to feel safe and protected against DDoS attacks. If something goes wrong, they rely on backups of their game progress that we automatically create for them, and if they want to move onto the next game, they use our game-switching feature to host a different game at no extra cost.”
On the other hand, businesses like game developers and publishers, need a trustworthy and reliable partner for multiplayer infrastructures.
“Our B2B customers want features to solve game server hosting at a large scale,” Raphael said. “Tooling and APIs allow them to apply changes to many thousands of game servers at once, and quickly scaling up hosting capacity across bare metal and cloud servers means always having enough capacity in place for their players.”
Raphael says Nitrado has built a new hosting platform for the past year tailored explicitly for session-based games like MMOs, shooters, and sports games. He noted that the key is the platform’s ability to scale up in response to player demand to maintain capacity during peak hours while being flexible enough to scale down during non-peak hours.
“We have been using this new solution for Last Epoch since their 0.9.2 release in September 2023, and we are looking forward to their 1.0 release in February,” Raphael said.
Nitrado Prioritizes Security and Low Latency
In addition to prioritizing gamers’ and developers’ needs, Nitrado focuses on security and low latency in the backend.
Raphael explains that cybersecurity isn’t primarily a concern originating from the players themselves, as they typically aren’t the ones engaging in malicious activities. Instead, the main threats come from external sources, such as DDoS attacks.
“Our primary goal is to create a fun multiplayer experience for players on our servers — and a server affected by a DDoS attack or even a hack is the opposite of fun,” Raphael said. “That’s why defending our users against these threats is one of our core tasks.”
Nitrado uses its own proprietary DDoS protection solution, SteelShield™, which offers advanced security against DDoS attacks and malicious traffic to prevent attacks during games.
SteelShield™ is tailored to protect UDP (User Datagram Protocol) game server traffic by integrating with the game’s network protocol so it’s completely firewalled. This UDP approach stands out in the DDoS protection market, which is why major studios like Bohemia and Studio Wildcard trust and depend on this solution.
Raphael also mentioned lag as another common issue with game server hosts. Low latency is another way of saying there’s no lag — essentially, a dream come true. Latency refers to the delay between a player’s action (such as firing a weapon in a first-person shooter game) and the corresponding effect being registered on the game server and then displayed on other players’ screens.
“This is why we, as a company, have to regularly make significant investments into our infrastructure,” Raphael emphasized. “For one, to have data center locations around the world, close to our users, ensuring low latency, and also to regularly replace hardware we have in those data centers with the newest and best-performing hardware that’s available.”
Another recent improvement was a pre-provisioning system for big game releases where Nitrado expects a high surge of server orders. Raphael said: “We have successfully used this new system to launch ARK: Survival Ascended, reducing the game server installation time to just a few seconds.”
Foreseen Trends and Upcoming News
Nitrado has been in the game hosting industry since 2001, so it’s seen many trends rise and fall over the past two decades. As for what’s next, the company foresees a couple of things rising in popularity.
“We see more and more titles releasing with or shifting to crossplay so that players from different platforms can seamlessly play together, including games that offer private servers,” Raphael said. “At the same time, we see a trend toward user-generated content in the form of mods, which was unthinkable on consoles just a few years back.”
Mods are becoming increasingly popular — I use them for almost every game I play, just because they offer a more flexible and customized experience. And with the rise of mod platforms like CurseForge and old favorites like Nexus Mods, I don’t think I’m alone.
To keep up with these demands, Nitrado is always researching and providing new and exciting games to the platform with convenient features kept in mind. For example, at the time of our conversation, Raphael says Nitrado was preparing for the launches of Palworld and Enshrouded.
Next, Nitrado is working to bring to the B2B realm features that its B2C consumers — regular gamers like you and me — experience. This involves adapting and expanding the new features for a wider set of B2B use cases, thereby enhancing the capabilities of the platform for business-oriented hosting services.
As a closing note, Raphael summed up everything Nitrado aims to accomplish in the best way possible.
“We’re on a path of constant improvement to our existing games and features,” Raphael said. “Games, technology, and the resulting requirements are always evolving. We’ll constantly pay attention, never rest on previous success, and change our approaches whenever necessary.”
