Ahmed Shaker · Publishing Technology

Yes, we are very proud of our auto-scaling system. We have a buffer-based auto-scaling system. Game servers are slot-based. So the game instance will take a specific number of slots. You cannot overload that. So when you auto-scale a system like that, you are bound to use what we call a buffer system, where you always have a step ahead of you of VMs or instances, both in the logical and the physical level. That buffer size, how much you maintain ahead of you, how fast it takes an instance from scratch to load the map and be ready for the players, these are adjusted. This auto-scaling system works on a regional level. So the guys in Sydney, it could be a rush hour for them. So we start spawning VMs over there. The US and the EU are not affected. It's a very essential system for us because gamers' behavior is always up and down, and we cannot have resources idle around. These are quite large VMs, so we cannot just have them hanging out for no use.