Game Lift - When does the timeout for game session activation trigger?

Hi SB_Antoine,

In the event that FlexMatch exceeds the number of created sessions to be created concurrently on a GameLift Fleet how does the timeout behavior function? Is the timeout timer started on the first session to be started or on the last?

Here is the documentation on GameSessionActivationTimeoutSeconds: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/gamelift/latest/apireference/API_RuntimeConfiguration.html#gamelift-Type-RuntimeConfiguration-GameSessionActivationTimeoutSeconds

RequestTimeoutSeconds

The maximum amount of time (in seconds) allowed to launch a new game session and have it report ready to host players. During this time, the game session is in status ACTIVATING. If the game session does not become active before the timeout, it is ended and the game session status is changed to TERMINATED.

In other words, this value means that GameLift will automatically terminate the game session if it is stuck in ACTIVATING. This is a failsafe mechanism to retry game session placement in case the build has issues. This timeout is applicable to individual game sessions and is not relevant in tandem with other game sessions. Let me know if I misunderstood your question.

As a side question, will FlexMatch wait indefinitely for a game session to become available, or will the matchmaking tickets timeout themselves?

Assuming you are using the "WITH_QUEUE" FlexMatch mode, the tickets will always timeout if it was not placed in an ACTIVE game session after your specified timeout period from when the ticket was created (e.g. GameLift will retry placing tickets into another game session if the originally selected destination had issues, as long as the tickets haven't timed out). If you are using "STANDALONE" flexmatch mode, then tickets will timeout if they have not been matched with other tickets.