Amazon GameLift introduces a new public API to terminate game sessions to easily resolve stuck game sessions.

We are thrilled to announce the launch of TerminateGameSession, a new public API for Amazon GameLift that empowers game developers to efficiently terminate game sessions running on their managed GameLift servers. This feature addresses a critical customer need to quickly resolve game sessions stuck in a bad or dangling state, ensuring smoother operations and optimal resource utilization.

Game developers using Amazon GameLift have long relied on its robust service to host and scale their game servers. However, situations occasionally arise where game sessions become stuck in an ACTIVATING state due to issues like unexpected errors or server bugs. These sessions block the server process from accepting new game session requests, reducing the effective availability of server resources. Until now, developers have had limited options to resolve these situations:

1. Manually terminating server processes via SSH.
2. Scaling down all server instances to recycle the problematic instance.

Both methods are time-consuming and disrupt developer and player experience.

With this launch, customers will be able to terminate game sessions directly through the Amazon GameLift Console, AWS CLI or SDK. This API offers two termination methods tailored to different use cases:

• Graceful Termination: Amazon GameLift communicates with the server process to initiate a clean shutdown of the game session. This allows customers to execute custom clean-up actions such as saving player data, writing logs, or notifying players before the session ends.
• Forceful Termination: If a graceful termination fails, or for situations where immediate action is required (e.g., during development), customers can forcefully terminate the session by directly killing the server process. This method bypasses customer code to ensure termination succeeds, regardless of potential server-side issues.

Customer Benefits

• Improved Operational Efficiency: Developers can now quickly address bad games session states without manual intervention or disruptive scaling activities.
• Flexibility in Development and Production: The API supports rapid, forceful termination during development and a player-first approach in production environments.
• Ease of use: Game developers can choose from either the Amazon GameLift console, or AWS CLI, or SDK to use the feature.

We are excited to see how the TerminateGameSession API improves your GameLift experience and simplifies the management of your game servers. For detailed documentation and examples, visit the TerminateGameSession API Reference and Dev Guide.

Thank you for your time,

Sachin Gupta | Sr. PM-T, Amazon GameLift