Containerisation
Containerisation is the practice of packaging your game server binary, runtime dependencies, libraries, and configuration into a single self-contained unit called a container image. The image runs identically on a developer’s laptop, a cloud VM, or a bare-metal server in a data centre — no “works on my machine” surprises.
Why containerisation matters for game servers
Before containers, deploying a dedicated server meant provisioning a machine, installing the right OS version, installing dependencies, copying the binary, and configuring environment variables — all by hand, and repeated for every region you wanted to deploy to. A single missed library version could break a deployment silently.
With containerisation, the entire environment travels with the binary. You build the image once, push it to a registry like Docker Hub, and your orchestrator pulls and runs it anywhere in the world. The server that passed testing is byte-for-byte identical to the server your players connect to.
How it works with Gameye
Gameye is built around containerised game servers. When you integrate with Gameye, you push your server image to Docker Hub or Amazon ECR. Gameye preloads your image globally, so when your matchmaker requests a session, a container is running within half a second — no cold-start wait while an image downloads.
You never push images directly to Gameye. You push to your registry, Gameye handles distribution. Each application supports up to five image tags simultaneously, so you can run multiple versions in parallel for testing or staged rollouts.
The portability benefit
Because your server is a container image, you’re not locked into any single infrastructure provider. The same image runs on Gameye’s bare-metal network, on AWS, or on your own hardware. If you need to switch providers or run hybrid infrastructure, your server binary requires no changes.
See also: Containers · Docker · How Gameye game server orchestration works