A CDN is a central part of the gaming industry but as a player, you might never know it. Because as a player, your main concern is likely just downloading the game and then installing it. Followed up by playing the game afterwards.
What you might not know is that a CDN plays a central role in making sure you can do those things. See, a CDN is a big part of making sure game development studios can streamline the delivery of game assets to players. This includes everything from base game files to DLC, hotfixes and more. While players don’t directly interact with a CDN, they benefit from it more than they probably realize.
What is a CDN for gaming?
Just imagine any online games you might play that receive regular hotfixes. The last thing you want is for those downloads to go slow. Especially if a particular hotfix is intended to fix game-breaking bugs or other serious issues. This is where a good CDN for the gaming industry comes in. By ensuring fast delivery of downloadable game assets, a good CDN makes it possible for players to spend much less time downloading files, and more time playing. And that can translate to a more enjoyable experience for the player.
CDNs accomplish this by using globally distributed server networks to cache information and files that need to be delivered. They then pull from a server that’s the closest to any-given user trying to download files for updates, DLC or full games, and then deliver those files from that server. Helping to reduce download times and make the entire process faster.
CDNs can be scaled for all kinds of uses
A CDN isn’t just for delivering full game downloads or DLCs. Or hotfixes for that matter. But they can also help to increase revenue of free-to-play games. As most players know, a free-to-play game uses micro transactions as a core piece of the pie when it comes to making money. These micro transactions are usually delivered to the player in the form of in-game items. Which can include anything from character skins to weapons and more.
The thing is these game assets have to be downloaded. And for a free-to-play game, fast delivery of these items is important. Because players are paying for this content and expect to have access to it right away. Unless it’s otherwise stated by the developer that certain items aren’t going to be immediately available.
A CDN helps ensure that any in-game purchases for items that are made, are available to players quickly so the experience of making one of these purchases is smooth. And a smooth buying experience like this is more likely to turn out more or recurring purchases from players. It doesn’t necessarily guarantee players will spend more money in free-to-play games of course. But players are certainly more likely to do so if there are little to no hiccups in getting what they paid for.
Smoother game releases
For PC and consoles games, a good CDN also helps to make sure developers can focus more on important tasks on game release days. Large file downloads filled with high-res image assets don’t pose as much of a problem, if at all. And if you’ve ever downloaded a large game on release day, then you know what it’s like if the experience was poor. Long downloads, corrupted files and the like. It only leads to longer download times and a less enjoyable experience.
Of course, it’s always important to remember that game release days are likely to be busy for servers. They’re not always smooth for online titles. And when they are it feels like a miracle. Players also need to expect that there might be issues. As this is just the nature of downloading games these days. But a good CDN can help to mitigate that to a certain degree.
Overall, a good CDN can make all the difference in how well a game does right from the get-go.
2023-07-18 15:09:46