Is the monthly rental fee for large-scale game servers expensive? The main factors are server hardware configuration, bandwidth scale, defense level, and service provider strategy. Usually the monthly rental price ranges from RMB 50,000 to RMB 500,000. The actual cost should be calculated based on the business scale and technical requirements.
1. Core cost drivers
CPU and memory 16 cores and 32GB memory are the basic configuration for large-scale games, with a monthly rental of about RMB 16,000 to 18,000. If you need to support more than 10,000 concurrent users (such as e-sports or large MMORPGs), you need to upgrade to 32 cores and 128GB memory, with a monthly rental of more than RMB 50,000. High-frequency multi-core processors (such as Intel i912900K) are 30% more expensive than ordinary servers due to the optimization of physics engines and AI calculations.
Storage performance NVMe SSD is the first choice due to its low latency characteristics. The monthly rental of 1TB SSD increases by about RMB 2,000. Although the HDD solution reduces the cost by half, it is only suitable for non-real-time data storage.
The unit price of exclusive bandwidth significantly affects the total cost. The monthly rent for 100Mbps bandwidth is about 15,000 yuan, while e-sports games require more than 200Mbps to ensure a delay within 10ms, and the cost increases to 30,000-50,000 yuan. BGP multi-line computer rooms reduce north-south delays through China Telecom/China Unicom/China Mobile converged lines, but the price is 40% higher than ordinary computer rooms. International bandwidth (such as European and American nodes) increases the unit price by another 30% due to cross-border link costs.
The monthly rent for basic DDoS protection (20G-50G) is about 3,000-5,000 yuan, but a customized cleaning solution is required to deal with 100G-level attacks, and the defense cost jumps to 10,000-50,000 yuan. E-sports games usually require more than 500G elastic defense due to the high frequency of attacks, and temporary upgrade costs during the attack period are calculated separately.
The monthly fee for 7×24-hour technical support is about 5,000-20,000 yuan, and the disaster recovery solution (such as cross-regional mirror backup) increases by 20001 million yuan. Physical server hosting also needs to bear hardware depreciation, with an average annual loss rate of about 15%.
II. Cost comparison of typical scenarios
Large-scale MMORPG/open world games use 16 cores 64GB + 100Mbps bandwidth + 100G defense solutions, with a monthly basic fee of 70,000-100,000 yuan. If multiple nodes are deployed in different regions (such as Asia and North American clusters), the total cost exceeds 200,000 yuan. Real-time e-sports games require 32 cores 128GB + 200Mbps bandwidth + 500G defense to ensure frame synchronization and low latency, with a monthly rent of 250,000-500,000 yuan. For example, the "League of Legends" event-level server uses dedicated physical equipment, and the peak cost reaches millions. The streaming media transmission of the cloud game platform relies on high-throughput hardware. The monthly rent of i9 processor + GPU server (such as NVIDIA T4) is 80,000-150,000 yuan, and the bandwidth cost accounts for more than 60% of the total expenditure.
III. Comparison of the economic efficiency of deployment modes
Cloud server elastic solution. For example, the monthly rent of Jtti's Hong Kong cloud server with 16 cores and 64G configuration is about $233.36, and it supports dynamic expansion during high-traffic periods. The long-term operating cost is lower than that of physical servers, and the performance is stable. The monthly rental fee for physical servers is a bit higher, which is suitable for mature games with stable demand. The hybrid architecture deploys the core logic on the physical server and migrates non-critical modules (such as the login system) to the cloud server, which can reduce the total cost by 30%.
IV. Cost optimization and supplier selection strategy
Defense cost control adopts the "basic defense + elastic upgrade" mode, with 100G protection enabled daily and temporarily upgraded to 500G when an attack occurs, saving 40% of the cost compared with the fixed high-defense solution. Bandwidth reuse and scheduling cache static resources through CDN edge nodes to reduce the bandwidth pressure of the main server; the shared IP strategy can share the bandwidth cost. The key point of negotiation with service providers is to get a 15%-20% discount for signing a contract for 1 year or more than 2 years. Give priority to one-stop service providers with integrated defense, BGP network and operation and maintenance support to avoid multi-layer procurement and increase management costs.
The monthly rental cost of large-scale game servers is the result of a balance between performance requirements, security levels and business strategies. In the early stage, elastic expansion and contraction can be achieved based on cloud services, and migration to cost-effective physical servers or hybrid architectures can be achieved after the user volume stabilizes. Invest in stages - use lightweight cloud servers to control costs during the testing period, upgrade to independent high-defense equipment after the public beta, and build a complete system through BGP multi-node and elastic defense in the mature stage, maximizing resource efficiency while ensuring player experience.
