Player.IO

Platform for web games

Multiplayer

The cornerstone of Player.IO is the hosted multiplayer service, which allows developer written code to be uploaded to Player.IO where it then runs and is scaled across the Player.IO cluster of multiplayer servers.

Main Features

screenshot of the Player.IO development server

The development server running a racing game, with a visualization of the current game state on the right hand side.

  • Local Development Server

    In order to make development and debugging as easy as possible, we supply a powerful and easy to use development server for use during development.
    Read more about the development server »

  • Easy to get started

    Everything you need to get started is contained in a single download, along with 3 sample games to learn from or build upon.
    Player.IO Downloads »

  • All Gameplay, No Housekeeping

    Don't worry about sockets, connections, databases, and all the other boring tedious issues. We take care of all that, and provide you an easy API that allows you to spend all your time implementing the thing that really matters; gameplay, not boring housekeeping.

  • Complete flexibility

    Player.IO doesn't impose any userfacing controls or graphics into your game, to ensure that you own 100% of the game experience. We supply sample lobby- and chat components, which you can choose to use and modify, or you can build your very own completly fitted to your game.

  • Serverside game code runs on our server cluster

    When you develop a game with Player.IO, your code and your game logic runs on the server, which gives great response times, security and flexibility. You don't have to install anything or manage any servers of your own, everything will be running on the Player.IO infrastructure.

  • High Performance

    Because we run your serverside code directly on our cluster with low latency, and because of a very lean and optimized message protocol, it's possible to create realtime games, like shooting or racing games as well as the more traditional turnbased games such as chess or scrabble.
    For examples, try out the sample games ».

  • Scalability

    Popularity is not a problem. As the popularity of your game grows, more capacity will be allocated to your game, ensuring a seemless transition from a single player to tens of thousands simultaneous online players.

  • Automatic error logging

    Our system automatically catches and logs all errors when your game is running on our servers. This helps you isolate and fix errors that only occurs when many users are playing your games.
    Read more »

  • Your game, not ours.

    In the end, Player.IO just provides backend services. The final game and its experience is 100% controlled by you. We don't impose any restrictions. You choose where to upload it, share it and anything else you want to do with it. It's your game after all.

  • Proven Technology and Scaling

    We've been developing our multiplayer technology since 2004 and we have used it successfully for commercial projects and massive games. It is proven, secure, stable and able to scale. It doesn't matter how popular your game gets, we will scale it as needed across our cluster of Game Servers without you having to do anything.

Issue Do It All Yourself Player.IO
Server software You can either spend a lot of time developing your own, or you can spend a lot of money buying one that's built for generic communication. We provide the Player.IO development server for you to develop against, which is made especially for Flash multiplayer games.
Server communication You need to learn whichever programming language the server uses, you need to figure out how to communicate with your game client, and you might have to learn socket programming and multithreading. We provide a simple Flash API that handles all the server communication, and we provide a .Net API for the server. This means you can use any language that is supported by the .Net CLR to develop the server part of your game, for example C#, VB.Net or J#.
Lobby and Chat You need to not only develop your actual game in Flash, you also have to develop a lobby system for matching people up, and an in-game chat for your players. We provide an example lobby and chat in the combo package that you can easily modify to suit your needs.
Hardware You need to buy or rent dedicated server hardware for your server software. Your game will run on the Player.IO server cluster.
Hosting Hosting it on your home broadband connection won’t be enough if your game gets popular, and dedicated hosting is very expensive. Just upload the game to Player.IO and choose the plan that suits your needs best: Pricing »
Operations Become your own IT support and make sure your server software is always running properly. Player.IO manages all the server software and hardware, so you won't have to.
Scaling You need to make sure your server scales properly, and you need to anticipate the hardware need and buy/rent more servers if needed. Player.IO will seamlessly scale up as demand for the game increases, and we will make sure there is always enough server capacity.