Low latency and high performance are two reasons in favor of bare metal game servers.
When hundreds of players descend on a battle royale game server, every millisecond counts. The difference between a flawless headshot and frustrating lag can hinge on the invisible but very perceptible infrastructure underpinning online games.
For years, cloud computing was the obvious choice because it was scalable, global, and fast to deploy. But over the past year, bare metal servers have been making a comeback.
Bare metal servers are physical machines rented out directly to developers, providing dedicated access with no virtualization layers.
Increasingly, game studios are blending them with cloud-based systems in a hybrid hosting strategy, which is partly a pragmatic response to rising costs and partly an attempt to provide the ultra-low latency needed for today’s games.
What’s behind the shift? Performance is the main thing. Bare metal servers offer direct access to hardware without a hypervisor in the way. That gives faster processing of player input and fewer latency spikes with up to 60% better CPU efficiency, according to bare metal server providers.
When thinking about latency-sensitive environments like esports or VR, that advantage is crucial.
Keeping costs down
But it’s not just about improving gameplay. Studios are also concerned about their budgets. Running games entirely in the cloud is costly, particularly once generous startup credits expire. Charges levied by providers for data leaving the platform can also be massive for bandwidth-hungry multiplayer titles.
In response, developers are starting to run their baseline workloads on bare metal, particularly the core player sessions and persistent world logic. They then use cloud servers to handle unpredictable traffic spikes. This approach can reduce the cost to developers by between 50 and 70% without sacrificing scalability.
The need to cut back costs isn’t solely for small studios. The firms behind AAA titles are reportedly running their real-time match servers on bare metal to guarantee sub-30 millisecond response times in competitive regions, while using cloud infrastructure for matchmaking, analytics, and burst demand.
Providers respond
Infrastructure providers are adapting fast. OVHcloud launched a new generation of bare metal game servers in December, offering AMD EPYC processors, rapid provisioning in under two minutes, and transparent pricing with no egress fees. Amazon, meanwhile, now offers GameLift Anywhere, which lets developers run game servers on their own hardware while still managing them via AWS.
Still, not everyone is convinced. Those in favour of the cloud argue virtualisation overhead costs have shrunk, and that modern container platforms like Kubernetes (via tools such as Agones) can match bare metal performance in most cases. Those cloud services also have their own advantages, including auto-scaling, integrated analytics, and simpler global deployment, the companies argue.
Critics also warn that hybrid models make running games more complex. Managing bare metal requires deeper technical expertise and more DevOps effort – two resources not all studios possess.
But beyond cost and latency, there’s a broader shift underway: infrastructure is no longer invisible. In 2025, game performance and profitability depend as much on design and graphics as it does on where and how a title runs. Which is why bare metal is becoming an increasingly popular choice among companies looking to offer peak performance while keeping their own costs down.
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