Server Regions

Server regions are the geographic locations where your dedicated game servers run. A region is typically a city or metropolitan area — Amsterdam, São Paulo, Singapore, Chicago — where one or more data centres host your server infrastructure.

Why region placement determines player experience

The speed of light sets a hard floor on network latency. A player in Tokyo connecting to a server in London will experience at least 150–200ms of round-trip time — no amount of optimisation can change physics. Placing servers close to your players is the single highest-impact infrastructure decision you can make for multiplayer feel.

As a rough guide:

Under 40ms — imperceptible, ideal for all genres
40–80ms — acceptable for most genres, competitive games start to feel sluggish
80–150ms — noticeable lag, problematic for fast-paced shooters and fighting games
Over 150ms — significant impact on gameplay quality and player retention

Choosing which regions to cover

Start with where your players actually are, not where you think they might be. Analytics from a soft launch, beta, or similar titles in the genre can tell you the geographic distribution of your player base. Prioritise the regions that cover the largest share of concurrent players first, then expand.

Common starting points for global coverage: one region in North America (East or West), one in Western Europe, one in Southeast Asia or Oceania. South America, Japan, and the Middle East are often added based on player data.

How region selection works with an orchestrator

With an orchestrator like Gameye, your matchmaker passes a preferred region (or a ranked list of regions) when requesting a session. The orchestrator places the server in the optimal location from those options, based on current capacity and availability. Players receive the connection address for a server already running near them — the latency is low from the moment the match starts.

Gameye operates in major population centres across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and South America, with capacity regularly added based on customer demand.

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