i want to start a gaming hosting company any want want to work

/**
* edit by klaude
*
* We get quite a few threads with people starting up game server providers.
* The responses in this one give some excellent tips on what you need to keep
* in mind when running a GSP. Alot of folks will run into it head first and end up
* going out of business because they didn't plan things through. Hopefully this
* thread will help keep that from happening with you and your GSP. Good luck,
* everyone!
*/

I'd be happy to take your money. I don't have any experience running game servers... but I have an excellent personality!

UD.

What did ya have in mind ?

Sure I'd love to work for you wiechamnn. First tell me a few things about your company.


1. What is your target market?

2. What is your business plan?

3. What is your starting budget?

4. What games do you plan on supporting?

5. What will be your support hours?

6. What will your billing procedures be?

7. How will you prevent chargebacks on server accounts?

8. Will you provide license keys for every game you support?

9. Will you provide license keys for external programs such as FTP etc..

10. Do you have any security measures you will employ on the servers?

11. How would you handle DDos attacks or sustained inbound/outbound traffic?

12. How many servers will you put on each machine and why?

13. What is maxclient rate translated?

14. How do you calculate average bandwidth per month using 95th percentile billing?

15. Do you have any escalation procedures in place in the event of a hard drive crash?

16. What is your backup procedures?

17. Do you have a backup plan in the event your server gets hacked?

18. Tell me which ports should be blocked and which should remain open if you are using your machine for game server clients only?

Thank you.

one day i hope to be as cool as xtreme gamer there... disregard his post dood its meant to scare you away..cause he's the only one competent to run a game server..

this is from the dood that said he only makes seven dollars a month...maybe you need to rethink your buisness plan

LOL

well even I dont know the answers to a couple of those. I hope that doesnt make me a bad person.

they are all very valid questions. If your serious you should try and work out all those anwsers. I think Xtreme was making a very valid post.

If you dont know the answers to those questions, or havent considered them you should make a point of finding out because they will help you!

(please read this post in a friendly manner, sometimes people read what im saying as is i was a mean tyrant - which im not )

#14 would be for colo servers only, as most colo is done on 95th percentile

Apparently Farcry is the only one that realizes the point of the questions. You do not need to know all of the answers but you do need to know more then your customers or staff.. Running a business whether on the internet or not is still running_a_business... When you decide to open your game server 'company' you are taking on a responsiblility. Please educate yourself before taking on clients.

When i started game hosting i didnt even look at that which is probably why my company has gone downhill now. Which is why we are starting a new company and planning it properly. So from personal experiance i now know that planning is a key issue.

From experience, listen to X. A solid business plan will be the best thing you can ever do. If you are looking for info on starting a company then reasearch the list of topics that X posted. And post some questions of your own.

Maybe rent a server and run a few games on it to see how they run and what system resources are needed for each game along with bandwidth requirements. Then come up with a plan.

You best listen to X, or most likely, you will fail.

And i didnt see this in the list, directly anyway:

19. How will you market your game servers? (get more customers)

20. What software will you give your customers to control their servers?

The list I made represents a few things that you need to give some thought to before taking on a business where you are dealing with other peoples hard earned money.

One perfect question for everyone to answer is this:

Would you rent a server off you?


I am almost positive the thread starter would say no.



Please don't take my posts as negative. I gain nothig by posting at server matrix. Heck I don't even have a server here or at thePlanet... What I do get out of this is trying to get some of the newer guys that want to break into game hosting a chance to step back and think about things before jumping right in. God knows game hosters have a bad enough name already ...

i think its good that your willing to help people out, because i know all too many people who get a server, put there own game server on there and thing "gee i could do this - all i'd need is a webpage" and they get too it.


This topic should idealy be pinned for people to look at before they get started, its not as easy as you thing guys (been there done that myself, but the datacentre had some serious network issues so everyone left ). Getting clients is hard, you cant just sit back and wait for orders to come in.

I would think to start a game server company you would need at least:
- Money for 3 months server rental of at least 2 servers at 0 profit. This means you can afford to pay for the servers for 3 months, and have the money waiting not "oh i'll take it out of my pay as it comes" because you cant garantee that pay or that you will have the funds availiable at the time.
- Money for a website, this can cost you between 100 and 500USD, a good site is not cheap. Sure you can use a template monster but then people who do their research on a company will see you have the same design as another company and will stay well away from both of you. If your site does not impress, the potential client will run off! It cost me $300USD for my site design and all my clients loved it!
- Advertising funds, Advertising on gaming sites varies from about 100$/month (blackbagops.com) to that much per week (one of the ctrlaltdel-online.com banners, top is $50/week though). You should be able to sustain this for at least 1 month, and understand that the advertising is there to increase awareness NOT get you signups there and then.
- Google ad words. You could be paying 10-50c/click though and you will get ALOT of them.
- Support. You need to be able to do the support yourself, and be availiable at all times or hire people you can trust to do it. Not just someone who you pay a dollar a ticket to who has full admin access to your box, someone you can meet and either know or get to know. Also you should get a billing system with ticket support or a ticketing system, which could cost you between $50 and $200 all up.
- If your on windows you WILL need something to keep your services running. On linux most games have a auto restart system, and you can add them to rc.d so they come online straight away in the case of a system failure. On windows you could use FireDaemon (see my sig for discount) to do this, or some control panels you can rent will do it for you too.
- Voice services, if your want to run these as included extras or stand alone purchases you MUST buy a license!

These are the absolute basics your going to need to spend money on.

All up if your using SuperXeons you will be looking at needing almost USD$2000 to get started. And your not going to get much profit right away!

Great post Farcry! I think we are heading in the right direction.

I think a very important thing to mention as well is security and maintenance.

If you are renting or co-lo'ing your machines you must either learn everything you can about security and maintenance. Please do not leave it to the datacenter to handle this stuff for you. Some DC's provide 'managed' service but they are not going to spend hours on end dealing with just your machine... An absolute must is for you to know the OS you are using inside and out. I don't know how many posts I have seen stating things like "How do I SSH into my machine?" and then a day or two later the same person declares "I want to run a game server company"
I can't help but think "there goes another compromised box..."

The basic rule, is if you don't know hire someone that does!

Trust me we have guys on staff that are sharp as tacks but to protect my business we routinely hire third party security experts to audit the machines and secure what needs to be secure. This is not an option to overlook. You get hacked or exploited once and you could potentially loose your business..

Nice post X.

Most people never think things all the way. They see the chance for a quick or easy buck and run.

Most people would not post that info as it helps the possible compition out..gives them Ideas they never had or knew about...but then again.

"Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail"

That doesn't bother me TP. I don't mind helping people out. Too many people as you said want to make a quick buck but the only thing they accomplish is giving game hosters a bad name... Education is a good thing.

As Mulder said.. "The truth is out there"

Good luck on getting a voice server license. Ventrilo and Teamspeak are not accepting any new customers at the moment. (Which makes no sense from a business standpoint)

yea, great post, i started mine about 3 months ago,, i was thinking about killing it in the 2nd month but i decied to try and wait it out, im glad that i did couse now it seems like things are picking up. the best way i found that i get custermers is threw my other custermers, ppl are very pleased with my bussnes and they tell their friends, and they tell more ppl and it jsut keeps going on and on. all in all my first cusitmer is really wut started the whole rush for me.

hey Xtreme-Gaming, X-Gaming at WHT im guessing. (im 'webephex' over at WHT - dont know if you know me)

Anyway - Those are all important questions. Ones i didnt think i needed to answer until after my first 3 months as a game server provider. Although i am on the right track now, i lost a lot of money my first few months. The most important questions in my opinion are:

How will you handle billing? What payment methods will you use?
How will you keep track of your clients, their configurations, etc?
How will you handle server crashes ... will you get software to handle it for you?
How will you manage support (helpdesk, e-mail, IRC, etc.)
Will you offer webhosting, ventrilo - how will you offer these?
How will the client manage his/her gameserver

You need to put the money into software otherwise you will have a mess. eSupport, serverdoc, iguana, modernbill, clientexec are all expensive but will help you out a great deal.

this needs a good solid *bump*

Too much good stuff to let it go

IMNSHO, this needs to be stickied... Damn good thread. And even though I've got lots of experience in the server side of gaming, this thread gave me some things to think about again.

I second the sticky-ing.

Very good post

I especially like the plug about security... In my business security is huge, and I see far to many people wait until they get hacked or comprimised before doing anything about thier security.

The place I work (I'm a Enterprise Server/Network Technician at a University in Canada) is much like that, unfortunately the people who decide how the money is spent have trouble spending money on a possibility. The problem with that is if you wait till something bad happens, it will definately cost you more money at that time, and may very well get you into some deep stuff like legal issues or as mentioned above, damage your business reputaion leading to business failure.

It's not worth waiting till something happens, or assuming it's not going to happen to you. I see it happen almost everyday and it will eventually happen to you if you aren't proactive about security.

Thanks also to the many posts about business plans, although I had already asked myself many of those questions, there were equally as many I hadn't thought of.. Very good resource, thanks again to all

Let it happen once to them, then you will see how quick they dish out the money

Stickied!

Excellent!

YaY!

YaY!

Thankyou VERY much Kevin!

I almost had the url memerised too

It has happened to them, twice now already (well significant ones anyways)... remember the love letter worm?... shut down our exchange servers for hours and hours.... I told them to have antivirus on there, they said they didn't need it because no one is ever one the server to open attachments, and also they were Alpha servers, no one everwrites viruses for alphas they said.... they never thought of the fact the virus spread so quickly the mail server couldn't handle it and ground to a halt. it took many hours to clean it up.

Then they got antivirus, of course.. and I said we need to have intrusion detection or at least a firewall in front of these servers. they said who would want to hack us, there is nothing worth stealing in these servers..., well we got hacked, servers comprimised, and had to be rebuilt from scratch, cost them thousands in man hours to rebuild the domain, guess what we got now. a firewall and Intrusion detection.. you see they don't learn to be proactive enough yet... i think they need it to happen a few more times...

But let this story be a lesson to those that think it won't happen to them, those two events are just a couple highlights over the past few years, there are many more were they came from. goes to show you can not afford to put it off, it will happen to you if you do. Even if it is only a game server, it still needs to be protected.

Very good thread

Hehe i am starting a business soon I am not going to read this whole thread cause i dont have that much time, but I could use help if anyone is interested.
----Edit-------
Shoot me an email if interested, and or post here.

chris@ccagameservers.com soon to be x-gamingservers.com

Just one thing, you do realise there is a popular company called xgamingservers already?

indeed i have not thought of a new name yet, the main reason i want x in there somewhere is my big selling point will be my clan which is player-x.org Our site generates a lot of traffic and many other clans would be very likely to take a look at our servers if we offered it. I might do a subdomain just to save money like servers.player-x.org or something like that

hahaha, thanks, that's pretty good.

A sub domain would be ok if you were just looking to offer small hosting to cover your costs and maybe make a bit of money but if you want to go full out on hosting and setting up a proper business i suggest you get it its own domain.

lol, that like illustrates the topics point 10x over.

Pretty much, lol.

LMAO... no kidding!! If there isn't enough time to read this thread how in the heck is there ever going to be enough time to run a business?

he was probably just kidding... nobody's that stupid.

Youd be suprised :shock:

Please read X's list of question's on Page 1.
They are valid and need to be understood.
If you jump in you will fail...that is a promise.

You need to have a plan.

As Gran Dad used to say.

Fail to Plan...... Plan to Fail !

Just a followup and a nice solid dose of reality for everyone..

Here is a list of some of the game server companies I have found that have failed just this year alone for one reason or another. (This is by no means a complete list)

It is important to note that at least a few of these companies I know from personal experience were very well run and established.


The point of this post? To give you a good idea of the turnover rate on new companies and to help prod you into going that extra mile for your business and hopefully overcome these odds.

-----------------------------------------------------

http://www.evasiveactiongaming.com/

http://pitstopgaming.com/

http://www.fraghqservers.com/

http://turbogamingservers.com/

http://www.btlservers.com/

http://www.cyberseals.net/

http://www.Gamerzarena.Net

http://www.deadlyhosting.com

http://extremenetworkz.com/

http://www.playdedicated.com/

http://www.ixer0.com

http://www.strikeservers.com

http://www.urbanservers.com

http://enzix.com

http://www.reddevilgaming.com

http://www.pserversolutions.com/

http://enhanced-gaming.net

http://www.syckoservers.net

http://www.nglservers.com

http://www.axisservers.com/

http://lowpingers.com

http://www.ampedservices.com

http://www.vbservers.net/

http://www.packetz.net/

http://www.fast-gaming.com/

http://www.boxmadness.com/

http://www.boomboomservers.co.uk/

http://www.hypersonichosting.com/

http://www.the-outer-realms.com/

http://www.enkicommunications.com

http://www.gotgameservers.com/

http://www.l33tservers.com/

http://www.factoryunreal.com

http://www.edgegamer.com/

http://lowpings.net

http://blackknightservers.com/

http://www.isogames.com/

http://www.ng-league.com/

http://www.interactivegaming.net/

http://www.gameracks.com/

http://www.gamehosts.com/

http://www.deviantservers.com/

http://www.game-extreme.com

How's the GSP business working out for you Chris?

I also noticed all the websites in my GSP favorites are slowly not responding 1 by 1. The more companies that go down the more people in need of a gaming server

Myself and my business partner have been planning a game server business - (to run under the parent company demon-networks) since roughly April this year. We're still in development mode and dont plan to be live for at least another month. That's the sort of work it takes if you want to be serious about it. Our current expenses are also close to the 5 figure mark.

To be honest though althought 4months of planning may seem like a lot it is not really unless you sit down every single day for a few hours doing stuff. I know people that have planned to open businesses and have spent a couple of years creating plans and they are still running now thanks to the great deal of time and effort they put into planning the business. The good thing about taking a lot of time in planning is that you can make a plan leave it for a month or so then go back and re-evaluate that plan over and over again until you are completley satisified and have every aspect of the business covered. I'm not saying your planning isnt good but compared to a lot of other businesses 4months really isnt a long time.

Possibly, but in the gaming industy you can't take a year to plan for a business as the plan will need to change with new technology and new games... As far as business structure, and general practice... sure... but you also need to have an idea of what software you're going to use to control the business. From accounting to sales to the OS your server run on.... Those will change through the course of a year.

And having expenses around 5 figures before you open up?? That doesn't seem good..

I've had the business structure plan for a while, as well as an accounting plan... The latest phase was to put into production two servers. One for game servers, the other for the webhosting side and voice servers. I've been running the two servers for several months w/ servers I've given to clans for free, as long as they get used.

As stupid as that may sound, It's been a good experience. I've gotten a view of what kind of demand a customer will have, and been able to run into the initial problems with non-paying customers before I run into them with people paying for service.