Speed-up onboarding to GameLift Servers with the Containers Starter Kit

Hello Amazon GameLift Servers Devs,

We are pleased to announce the Amazon GameLift Servers Containers Starter Kit, a tool that provides you an easier and quicker onboarding experience for running containerized game servers on Amazon GameLift Servers. In November 2024, we announced that Amazon GameLift Servers supports containers for building, deploying and running game server packages. Customers are able to provide Amazon GameLift Servers container images and create a fleet that can operate and scale these containers.

With today’s release of the Containers Starter Kit, we simplify onboarding to container fleets. This tool allows you to take any existing game server build, and host it on containers on Amazon GameLift Servers. You don’t need to install any tools locally, as the build and deployment are done on AWS CodeBuild. An automatically configured SDK wrapper integrates with the server SDK for Amazon GameLift Servers. This allows you to take your existing Unreal, Unity, or other game server build and get started with Amazon GameLift Servers in less time than before. You can then extend to additional features at your pace.

The solution is hosted in the Amazon GameLift Servers Toolkit and is available for use today. There are four steps you’ll take to get started, including

1. Get your Linux game server build ready. This can be any Unreal, Unity, or other game server binary
2. Deploy the provided AWS CloudFormation template in the AWS Console. The template contains the Amazon GameLift Servers container fleet, and the build automation tools
3. Copy your game server build to the starter kit, and set your port and game server binary name
4. Upload your game server as a zip file to S3, and run build on the AWS CodeBuild project

To help you get started, check out our this related solutions guidance blog post or the Amazon GameLift Servers Toolkit repository. Once you’re familiarized with the service, you can start customizing the deployment automation to your needs, or move the scripts to your own CI/CD tooling. You can customize the CloudFormation template to add more regions, set up automatic scaling of your fleets and more. And later on, if you want to integrate with the full server SDK, the Readme in the repository will guide you through the minor changes to do that as well.

It’s now easier than ever to get started with Amazon GameLift Servers. As always, your feedback has been invaluable in driving these improvements, and we encourage you to continue sharing your thoughts with us.

Mark Choi | PM, Amazon GameLift