Thank you for your feedback on the Amazon GameLift Containers Preview release!

Dear game devs,

We are very pleased to see the incredible engagement and insightful feedback from our community during the Public Preview of containers support for GameLift. Thank you! First and foremost, we want to extend a heartfelt thanks to all of you who tried out the Public Preview, shared your experiences, and provided invaluable suggestions for improvements. Your feedback has been essential in shaping the future of this feature.

We heard feedback that while the current Preview experience offers tremendous customization and flexibility, it can feel like too many options, especially during the initial onboarding process. Specifically, we heard three things you wanted to see changed with the GameLift Containers feature going forward:

1. The complexity, driven by the high customization and flexibility, can be a barrier to quickly getting up to speed and reaping the benefits of containers.
2. Because the feature is optimized for running many game sessions per container, we required the installation and management of the GameLift Agent, as well as the configuration of runtime environment details at the Fleet level, resulting in lots of integration steps.
3. We heard that you want the ability to update Container Fleets with new ContainerGroupDefinitions (“CGD” to speed up your development and iteration time. We heard you asking for a user experience where Fleets are able to come up independently of CGDs, thus ensuring that validation will no longer block Fleet creation.

Based on this feedback, we will be making significant updates to improve the Containers feature before we launch the General Availability (GA) release later this year. These changes include:

1. Simplify the onboarding experience. GameLift will simplify the initial Fleets creation and onboarding experience, by providing new defaults on 6 fields (reducing required count to 2) and auto-configure and update some fields (e.g., ports, packing counts, etc.) for values that aren't overridden, to eliminate the need to be concerned with underlying hardware configuration.
2. Reduce the integration steps. We will make the Amazon GameLift Agent an optional feature that can be used for customers looking to pack more than one game session per container. If you just want to launch one game session per container (as we heard most customers do), you won't have to download, build and implement the Agent into your container runtime ever.
3. Add more flexibility to speed up iteration. We will also decouple Fleet creation from the ContainerGroupDefinition (CGD) creation. This will improve your ability to quickly iterate, as Fleets will be able to have new CGDs place onto them, thereby allowing updates to Fleets without having to re-create from scratch. This will also provide more flexibility in how you integrate and model in Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) solutions like CloudFormation or Terraform.

These changes will deliver a more straightforward experience while retaining the customization options for those who need them. Our goal is to make sure that every game developer, whether new or experienced, can fully leverage Amazon GameLift Containers with ease.

Upcoming Feature Improvements

Starting on August 16th, we will be entering a period of feature improvements. While there’s nothing you need to do on your end right now, we wanted to make sure you’re aware of the upcoming changes. Specifically during this time, we will be implementing significant updates, including some changes to the APIs and deletion of existing resources. These API and behavior updates will not be backward compatible with the existing GameLift Containers Preview APIs. We understand that changes of this magnitude can be disruptive, and we appreciate your understanding and patience as we work to deliver the best possible experience.

Looking Forward to the GA Launch

We are excited about the enhancements and improvements that are on the horizon, and we can't wait to share them with you. Please stay tuned for additional news and updates as we approach the General Availability launch later this year. Here at Amazon GameLift, our approach is simple: we start with our customers like you. Inspired by Amazon's famous “working backwards” philosophy, we place your needs and experiences at the heart of everything we do. Your feedback is not just valuable—it's essential. It shapes our decisions, drives our innovations, and guides us toward creating the best possible products and services. We're deeply grateful for your insights and your trust, and we're committed to continuing this journey together, ensuring that every step we take is one that meets your expectations and exceeds them. Thank you for being an integral part of our evolution and for being a part of our community!

Mark Choi Sr. PMT-ES, Amazon GameLift