So you want to make a PvP game, eh?
As a former system administrator & cyber security technician at a tech company not in Silicon Valley, I think I may have information that may be of use to your endeavors:
Are you looking into using a virtual server, a dedicated game server, a cloud instance, or running PvP via peer to peer technologies?
- If you are doing a virtual server, you can maybe have tops 15 unique players at a time, running up to 60% of the hourly CPU allotment, and still have a functioning server. If you go beyond these figures you might have to purchase a service provisioning upgrade from your host, your cloud provider, or your upstream, depending on the provider you work with.
- If you are doing a game server, you only have a maximum NNN amount of resources per resource variety, so if you exceed your resource capacity, you are in violation of your TOS that you abide by with your host, and they may shut you down, or suspend your server, or turn it off for up to an hour, or they may cancel and terminate your contract altogether.
- If you go the cloud instance route, you will be paying per slot per hour or in greater or fewer payment accrual frequencies. If you exceed your resources, expect a massive bill. By massive I mean hundreds to upwards of a million dollars a month (extreme cases only).
- If you go the peer to peer route, you can run unlimited games and maps but you have a maximum sane user roster of 500 - 1000 concurrent gamers per room / map. This is on multiple game instances. You will need to setup a brokering server to authenticate your peers and to ensure that everyone plays the same game, albeit in a different map per hundred gamers.
I would suggest going the Peer to Peer route if you have zero idea what you are doing, but if you don't want cheating or scamming in your game, you should try one of the server routes. If you don't have a million dollars to spare, avoid the cloud instance provisioning option and install or hard code in rate throttling features to prevent overages and abuse of your server's resources.
Just my two cents.