Game DDoS Protection
Best protection for your eSports and online gaming
The online gaming and eSport sector is growing very rapidly, thanks to high performance hardware available on mobile, PCs and server side. Together with that trend, there is a growing amount of security threats, especially Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks launched against the online gaming industry.
Use our Game DDoS Protection to fight cyber-attacks, while focusing on driving your gaming business the way you want. No more time wasted on cybercrimes! Game DDoS Protection is an integral part of our Bare Metal Game servers range and integrates well with our general Anti-DDoS Infrastructure system that protects our entire product portfolio.
Key business benefits
Minimize downtime, secure community ranks and keep your brand recognition growing. Maintain a good quality level of your services. Defend against cybercrime.
No advanced skills are required to enable protection. Do it in just a few clicks! Fully managed, which means it's our responsibility to ensure the best possible quality.
Game DDoS Protection is a network security solution that works from the very first bad packet, no more need to over-provision your infrastructure in order to handle gaming application attacks.
Product specifics
- Always-on attack detection and mitigation guarantees no-jitter for sensitive gaming applications. No scrubbing-center switching anymore!
- Ultra fast protection - filtering works from the very first malicious packet
- Unmetered - no matter the volume of the attack, we will mitigate it at no additional fees!
- Unlimited in time - no matter how long an attack may last, we will protect you from different types of attacks
- Simple to use - just specify the port and game and it's on!
- Full trust and data sovereignty - we do not share your traffic with external parties, nor we analyze any byte more than strictly necessary
- Market recognition - a number of well-known 3rd party companies already place their trust in us!
- Customization possibilities - you can tune some components to your needs (more flexible options soon!)
- High performance for stability - we use the best hardware and develop dedicated software solutions to offer stability in the wake of the largest attacks
List of protected games and applications
| Engine protection | Game protocol/version |
| Ark | ARK: Survival Evolved |
| Arma | Arma II, III |
| GTA Multi Theft Auto SA | Multi Theft Auto San Andreas (MTA: SA) |
| GTA SA MP | Grand Theft Auto San Andreas Multiplayer (SA: MP) |
| HalfLife (Quake Engine) / Source | Half-Life, Half-Life Deathmatch Classic, Team Fortress Classic, Counter Strike 1.6, Day of Defeat Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter Strike: Source, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Day of Defeat: Source, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Garry's Mod |
| Minecraft Pocket Edition | Minecraft Pocket Edition |
| Minecraft Query | Minecraft Query |
| Minecraft Java | Minecraft Java edition is protected on general Anti-DDoS Infrastructure |
| Mumble | Mumble |
| Rust | Rust |
| TeamSpeak 2 | TeamSpeak 2 |
| TeamSpeak 3 | TeamSpeak 3 |
| Trackmania/Shootmania | TrackMania (incl. TCP), TrackMania 2 (incl. TCP), ShootMania Storm (incl. TCP) |
Best practices and guidelines
DDoS attack in a gaming world
The online gaming and eSport sector is one of the main targets of cyberattacks. These platforms are often very sensitive to network conditions, thus require a stable network link because connection jitter can make them unusable or even result in a full outage. Also, a better quality of service means a higher rank in gaming communities. On the other side, it is very easy to buy a DDoS attack and degrade or even shut down someone's business. Another point is that these kinds of attacks usually take place on the application layer and bypass standard network firewalls and this definitely does not help matters.
As a result, it is essential for hosting platforms to keep the server's IP-address permanently protected against threats. DDoS attacks usually exploits the non-connected mode (UDP), a network-layer protocol that is commonly used by video games and voice servers for fast data transfer.
To fight against these massive and frequent threats, we have developed a service that is permanently turned-on, close to the gaming service, and leverages incredibly fast hardware. It understands gaming application situations (active game vs connecting or authentication phase) and is able to distinguish legitimate players from bad actors. Game quality is protected.
Two-way mitigation for best quality
For each type of identified attack, we have built a specific solution deployed as closely as possible to the servers, and directly integrated with special protection hardware. One of our most important innovations is a platform that analyzes incoming and outgoing traffic. It is able to identify legitimate requests very accurately and understands which player is at which state of a game. It can also distinguish real players from harmful attacks on a server from the very first network packets!
While Anti-DDoS Infrastructure protects mostly on network layers from generic threats (L3-L4, TCP/IP), Game DDoS Protection plays the role of deep analysis and shield for connection-less application protocols transported over such network (usually using UDP). Those two systems are tightly connected together for a best protection possible.
Customised Game DDoS Protection
To offer you the very best protection against DDoS and DoS attacks, OVHcloud security experts and engineers analyzed how the most popular online games work (Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Minecraft, etc.), as well as communication modules like TeamSpeak and Mumble. Via extensive lab tests and by validating the proper usage of protocols and using behavioral heuristics, we are able to filter most (if not all) illegitimate traffic. We also constantly stay up-to-date with information gathered from communities, from our customers asking us to solve a particular problem or just by monitoring threats.
With all this work, we have been able to provide a solution that is adapted for numerous types of games. We have offered this protection via special protection profiles, i.e. sets of rules that the user can deploy in one click to filter both incoming and outgoing traffic via UDP ports as accurately as possible.
Use cases
Offer your users the very best gaming experience, and efficient protection against DDoS attacks. Achieve economies of scale by hosting your gaming servers at the best price. Get peace of mind with OVHcloud.
Delegate hosting to a specialist, and focus on your work. Whether you are looking to host gaming server clusters, cloud gaming, or anything else, OVHcloud solutions can be adapted to suit your needs with best-in-class protection.
Get specially designed gaming servers, with the best performance/price ratio on the market, and Game DDoS Protection included at no extra cost. There are no limits to following your passion.
View prices for the Game dedicated server range
Choose the right server from a wide range of models and options.
Customer success stories
FAQ
What does "DDoS gaming", "game booting" or "server stresser" term mean?
It is the slang term for launching an attack against a game server. The main purpose is to interrupt its services, thus making it not usable for regular players.
What is the difference between Game DDoS Protection and Anti-DDoS Infrastructure?
While Anti-DDoS Infrastructure mitigates the largest and fastest attacks at scale (thus mostly on layer 3 and 4 ISO/OSI), Game DDoS Protection understands and protects game applications from more sophisticated attacks (layer 7 of ISO/OSI model).
What do I need to install on my game server to be protected?
Nothing. All works out-of-the-box. The only thing you need to do is to configure the proper protection in your control panel (game-firewall in IP section).
Is there a limit to the number of attacks per month that my service can receive?
There is no time limit for receiving our protection, regardless of how many times your services are targeted by DDoS attacks.
Can I deactivate Game DDoS Protection on my server?
Yes, you can do this in your control panel (game-firewall in IP section)