So Spectrum does handle UDP game traffic, but with caveats. Thanks sagepat.
My use case is Minecraft which is TCP, probably easier. Still, $250 base is a hard sell against $5/mo VPS that I can clone in 10 minutes.
Game server hosting: why I stopped caring about DDoS protection claims
Joy
Member OP
JohnCreek said:
OVH Game in France
OVH Game price is honest at least. €40 for real mitigation, I respect this. But my ARK server is for priend group only, 8 player max. €40 is more than we spend on game itself xixixi.
My solution now: Contabo https://contabo.com/en/vps/ €5/mo, no protection claim, when die I wait. Attack never last forever, priend go sleep, next day new IP. Brutal but cheap.
Same strategy as Joy but I use Hetzner auction servers for my Minecraft network. €30/yr for i7-3770, 16GB. When IP gets blackholed I snapshot, restore to new auction box, update DNS. 20 minutes downtime, once every 3 months.
My docker-compose and backups live in Git. New box pulls, starts, done.
"Infrastructure as cattle" applies to bare metal too if you automate.
my cloud. my rules. my 3AM alerts.
SamAlvi said:
20 minutes downtime
This is why I pay five providers. Not for protection, for speed of migration. Hetzner, Vultr, DigitalOcean, Linode, AWS lightsail. All have APIs. Terraform plan, one apply, DNS flips.
Cost: ~$80/mo across all five. Downtime target: under 5 minutes. I have hit 2 minutes once.
Is it overkill? Yes. Do I enjoy it? Also yes.
I am old school. Chicago colo, my own hardware, my own ASN. When DDoS hits I call my upstream and we discuss. Sometimes they scrub, sometimes I eat it. Cost of doing business.
What I do not do: pretend a €4 VPS comes with magic shield. That is marketing for people who do not understand how packets work.
visit twice: install and decom
Following this thread. I run a small CS:GO server on Vultr Chicago, no protection plan. Got hit once, nullroute 3 hours. Moved to new instance same datacenter, new IP, back in 15 minutes.
The "protection" add-on Vultr sells is $10/mo extra — https://www.vultr.com/pricing/. Anyone tried it? Is it just the same blackhole with a prettier dashboard?
speedasad said:
The "protection" add-on Vultr sells is $10/mo extra.
I tried it. Same auto-null, but you get an email saying "DDoS attack detected, protection activated." Then second email: "IP null-routed for community safety."
The $10 is for the email template basically.
This thread convinced me to cancel my HostHatch "protected" upgrade. I did not know null-routing was standard. I thought protected meant protected.
Back to cheapest plan + snapshots. Thanks all.
Joy said:
€40 is more than we spend on game itself
This is the real market reality. Game server operators are price-sensitive hobbyists, not enterprises. The gap between "what protection costs" and "what hobbyists will pay" is where all these fake claims live.
Hosts know this. They sell hope, not packets.