One of the challenges that game publishers face when employing CI/CD processes is the distribution of updated game binaries in a scalable, secure, and cost-effective way. Continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) processes enable game publishers to improve games throughout their lifecycle.

Often, CI/CD jobs contain minor changes that cause the CI/CD processes to push a full set of game binaries over the internet. This is a suboptimal approach. It negatively affects the cost of development network resources, customer network resources (output and input bandwidth), and the time it takes for a game update to propagate.

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Why CI/CD in gaming is hard today Game server binaries are usually a native application that includes binaries like graphic, sound, network, and physics assets, as well as scripts and media files. Game servers are usually developed with game engines like Unreal, Amazon Lumberyard, and Unity. Game binaries typically take up tens of gigabytes. However, because game developer teams modify only a few tens of kilobytes every day, frequent distribution of a full set of binaries is wasteful. For a standard global game deployment, distributing game binaries requires compressing the entire binaries set and transferring the compressed version to destinations, then decompressing it upon arrival. You can optimize the process by decoupling the various layers, pushing and deploying them individually. In both cases, the continuous deployment process might be slow due to the compression and transfer durations. Also, distributing the image binaries incurs unnecessary data transfer costs, since data is duplicated. Other game-binary distribution methods may require the game publisher’s DevOps teams to install and maintain custom caching mechanisms. This post demonstrates an optimal method for distributing game server updates. The solution uses containerized images stored in Amazon ECR and deployed using Amazon ECS or Amazon EKS to shorten the distribution duration and reduce network usage.