Shockbyte Hosting Advice Interview

Over the course of the last 3 years since Valheim's release date in 2021, we've seen a massive uptick in game development studios who are choosing a "Player Hosted" multiplayer route rather than one entirely hosted in-house. Valheim's massive success on Early-Access launch to Steam inspired a wealth of other studios to do the same, with Iron Gate not even realizing the standard bearer they had become for player-owned hosting.

Valheim's 2.5 million sales in under 2 weeks are no laughing matter and since it's enthusiastic launch in 2021, it has since amassed a whopping 10 million+ as of numbers calculated back in April of 2022. The reason for Valheim's success stems from a community that is self-hosted, keeps coming back, and is entirely self-driven on every playthrough. When you set the rules, you like the game. This phenomenon that Shockbyte has been eagerly educating game developers about for the past few years is exactly what we told Hosting Advice all about in our wonderful interview.

**How You Should Be Launching Games to Multiplayer**

In this wonderful interview, the Hosting Advice team asked us many valuable questions that tell a broader story about how slow the current industry is moving in education. "What really started became a turning point for Shockbyte in the game server hosting industry?"

Minecraft was the first and it always has been, but nothing really began to show indie developers that POGS works until Valheim launched to early access.

POGS, or "player-owned game servers", ALSO known as simply "dedicated servers," are viewed to be a daunting task in the gaming industry. P2P, Steam Networking, or the plethora of instant server provisioning integrations built into every game development software has a near unparalleled amount of convenience in comparison. What these developers don't realize is the sky-high costs they'll incur along the way. Costs don't always come in the form of money as well.

Multiplayer Connection Types — *You lose out on so much customization when choosing P2P, but it's a simple solution for indie studios.*

What We Told Hosting Advice We're Doing

Shockbyte has seen dozens of indie studios and even now PocketPair struggle to fund (and scale) their official multiplayer server hosting endeavors due to overhead costs simply being too much for a development company to bear. As we spoke about during the peak of Palworld's launch, the CEO of PocketPair was quick to point out that server fees alone could bankrupt the studio. Choosing a POGS format for multiplayer was not only the key to success for Palworld, but the key for sustained growth of the player base.

We've been preaching these stories of success at conventions, online during wonderful interviews such as these, and direct to developers over hundreds of calls. One of the biggest nails we wanted to hammer down while chatting with Hosting Advice is not to choose Shockbyte or any other host- choose dedicated server hosting. Many games may not initially find it relevant for themselves if they are a shooter, a MOBA, or session-based, but this is not the case. CS2, TF2, and plenty of many other modern shooters are still POGS! It's the most reliable way to set yourself up for success, even if you aren't building a sandbox.

How Is Shockbyte Making A Difference?

We've begun a total overhaul of our thought process here at Shockbyte making educating game developers making educating game developers far more important than selling anything. What is important most to the Shockbyte team is a reliable, fun, and streamlined way to play modern gaming affordably and that can only be achieved if we continue to see this ongoing trend in the gaming industry for POGS.

If game developers continue to tunnel vision on the most convenient tools supplied to them, not only will the industry suffer due to their overwhelming costs on those studios, but the power provided to players by POGS will be completely denied across the board. Nearly every year we continue to see a rise in UGC, player-owned servers, and even more love for owning digital content online. Without dedicated server games and server providers such as us here at Shockbyte, we'd worry about player's abilities to express themselves and truly own online spaces as they do in the current era of gaming.