- Platform focus: Gameye is 100% games — Founded in 2017, 120M+ sessions orchestrated. Hathora pivoted to AI inference in late 2025 and announced shutdown in March 2026.
- Engineering overhead: Gameye requires no SDK in your game server binary. Hathora required its SDK for server lifecycle management.
- Egress fees: Gameye includes all bandwidth. Hathora charged per-GB egress on top of compute.
- Migration: Both platforms are container-based. Your Docker images work on Gameye — remove the Hathora SDK and don't replace it. Full migration guide.
What is Hathora?
Hathora was a YC-backed game server hosting platform that launched in 2023. It provided container-based hosting, autoscaling, DDoS protection, and matchmaker integration across global regions.
Hathora announced on March 4, 2026 that its game server hosting platform will shut down on May 5, 2026. The team is joining Fireworks AI. In November 2025, Hathora had launched an AI inference platform (models.hathora.dev) and shifted focus from gaming to broader compute orchestration. Hathora's recommended migration path is GameFabric by Nitrado.
Why did Hathora shut down?
In November 2025, Hathora launched models.hathora.dev — an AI inference platform for voice agents, ASR, TTS, and LLMs. The homepage shifted to "Compute orchestration across GPUs and CPUs." Gaming moved to a subpage. Blog posts increasingly focused on LLM inference latency. Four months later, the shutdown announcement came.
This is a pattern worth watching with any infrastructure provider: when engineering resources split between games and a faster-growing market, games risk becoming the legacy business.
Gameye has one business: multiplayer game infrastructure. Seven years of production, 120M+ sessions orchestrated, one roadmap. No AI pivot, no side projects.
How much do egress fees add to your bill?
Hathora charged per-GB egress fees on top of compute pricing. For multiplayer games, egress typically represents 40–60% of total infrastructure cost at scale. A 10-player match at 60 Hz generates roughly 2–5 GB of outbound data per hour. At $0.09/GB, that's $0.18–$0.45 per server-hour in bandwidth alone.
A game with 50,000 CCU can spend $20,000–$50,000/month on egress alone at cloud-provider rates. As player count grows, egress grows with it — compute scales linearly, but egress scales with both players and data rate.
Gameye includes all bandwidth in its per-vCPU-hour pricing. No separate egress charge. No per-GB fees. The price you model is the price you pay.
How does Gameye compare to Hathora feature by feature?
| Criteria | Gameye | Hathora |
|---|---|---|
| Platform status | ✓ Active — 100% games | ✗ Shutting down May 5, 2026 |
| Game server SDK | ✓ None — no code in your server binary | Hathora SDK required for server lifecycle |
| Track record | Founded in 2017, 120M+ sessions orchestrated | ~3 years, limited public data |
| Container start time | 0.5 seconds | Nodes: under 2 minutes (per archived Dec 2024 docs) |
| Egress fees | ✓ None — included in pricing | Yes (per GB) |
| Pricing | $0.07/vCPU/hr, publicly stated | "Schedule a call" (not published) |
| Infrastructure | 21 providers, 200+ datacenters — bare metal + cloud | Cloud + bare metal option |
| DDoS protection | Game-aware profiles across all 21 providers | Included |
| Failover | ✓ Automatic cross-provider | Not publicly documented |
| Uptime SLA | 99.99% — publicly stated | Not publicly stated |
| Matchmaker integrations | Pragma, Nakama, FlexMatch, PlayFab, or any custom via REST API | Custom integration required |
| Onboarding | Sandbox in 24 hours | N/A (shutting down) |
How do the platforms handle DDoS protection and failover?
DDoS protection
Hathora included DDoS protection, but relied on cloud-provider-default rules. Gameye includes game-aware DDoS profiles across all 21 providers — rules tuned for game traffic patterns like UDP floods and reflection attacks. Generic web-focused DDoS rules drop legitimate game packets. Gameye's profiles are designed specifically for game server traffic.
Multi-provider failover
Hathora ran on a limited set of cloud providers. If that provider had a regional outage, sessions in that region went down. Gameye maintains multiple providers per region — if one provider fails, new sessions are automatically routed to healthy providers. No single provider failure can take down a Gameye region.
This multi-provider architecture is how Gameye backs its 99.99% SLA with real infrastructure redundancy, not just a contractual promise.
Why choose Gameye as an alternative to Hathora?
- A platform 100% focused on games — no AI pivot risk
- No SDK in your game server binary
- Proven scale — 120M+ sessions since 2017
- Predictable costs without egress fees
- Publicly stated pricing you can model before a sales call
- Multi-provider failover — not dependent on a single cloud
- Native matchmaker integrations (Pragma, Nakama, FlexMatch)
- A sandbox running in 24 hours
- Hathora shuts down May 5, 2026
- Both platforms are container-based — your Docker images work on Gameye
- Remove the Hathora SDK — Gameye requires no replacement
- See the full migration guide for a step-by-step breakdown
What do studios say about Gameye?
"It's reassuring to know that we could scale up indefinitely as we prepare for platform events and sales."
Read case study: 60%+ cost reduction →"We felt there was a personal relationship, and if there was a problem, we knew Gameye would be there."
Read case study: 250K players at launch, zero downtime →Key terms
Frequently asked questions: Gameye vs Hathora
Did Hathora shut down?
Yes. Hathora announced on March 4, 2026 that its game server hosting platform will shut down May 5, 2026. The company is joining Fireworks AI. Studios on Hathora need to migrate — see our migration guide for a full comparison of options.
Can I migrate from Hathora to Gameye?
Yes. Both platforms are container-based, so migration is straightforward. Your Docker images work on Gameye — and unlike Hathora, Gameye requires no SDK in your game server binary. Remove the Hathora SDK and don't replace it. Our team can help you run both platforms in parallel during transition.
Did Hathora charge egress fees?
Yes. Hathora charged egress bandwidth fees in addition to vCPU usage. Gameye includes all data transfer in its capacity-based pricing with no separate bandwidth charge.
How does scaling speed compare?
Gameye starts new containers in 0.5 seconds on average. Per Hathora's archived pricing documentation (December 2024), their autoscaler spun up nodes in under 2 minutes.
Do I need a Gameye SDK in my game server?
No. Gameye requires no SDK in your game server binary. Hathora required its SDK for server lifecycle management. With Gameye, you remove the Hathora SDK and don't replace it — your server just starts, listens on its port, and accepts connections.
Is Gameye 100% focused on games?
Yes. Gameye has one business: multiplayer game server infrastructure. Seven years of production, 120 million sessions orchestrated, one roadmap. No AI pivot, no side projects.
How does DDoS protection compare between Gameye and Hathora?
Gameye includes game-aware DDoS protection across all 21 providers at no extra cost, with profiles tuned for game traffic patterns (UDP floods, reflection attacks). Hathora included DDoS protection but used cloud-provider-default rules. Gameye's multi-provider architecture also means a DDoS attack on one provider doesn't affect sessions on other providers.
How much do egress fees add to the cost of game server hosting?
Egress fees typically represent 40–60% of a multiplayer game's total infrastructure cost at scale. A game with 50,000 CCU can spend $20,000–$50,000/month on egress alone. Hathora charged per-GB egress on top of compute. Gameye includes all bandwidth in its pricing with no separate egress charge.
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