[njaremko]

What differentiates this from a more general solution like fly.io? It seems like what’s being provided is an auto-scaling docker deployment with fast cross region network links, and storage? Fly provides all of that, and isn’t focused on gaming. Why would I choose Hathora?

[hpx7]

Hathora Cloud provides several important features specific to multiplayer gaming. To list a few:

1) Built in authentication/identity

2) Session/room based connections (with lobbies, matchmaking, etc)

3) Handlers for various transports (websocket, TCP, UDP)

[DaiPlusPlus]

So you're competing with Azure Playfab... so are those services you mentioned just now available a-la-carte or is it an all-or-nothing approach? (as in, can you use your sessions/rooms without using your IdP / can we bring our own IdP (using OIDC? SAML?) - or is your room system built around your IdP?

Websockets are very different to BSD Sockets (TCP/UDP/etc) though (string messages vs. binary packets/datagrams) - if you're abstracting-away then that means devs are ceding a lot of control over the performance dials (TCP_NODELAY? Nagle?)

The example in the article using a Node.js-based game-server is fine, but what options do people needing to run a Quake-style game server (i.e. a ph-phat binary) have?

[paulgb]

If you look at the cli screencast, it appears to be using fly under the hood.

[dsiddharth]

Yep, we love Fly.io! We're building our platform-as-a-service on top of Fly and augmenting it for gaming-specific needs.