Dedicated Server Case Study: Scirra Game Software
When London-based brothers Tom and Ashley Gullen started Scirra in May 2011, they needed dedicated servers that would grow with their software company. Their main product, Construct2, already had a following from users on the original Construct platform. ReliableSite has provided dedicated hosting for their high-traffic website, as well as their product downloads and other game-related services from the beginning.
“Good quality service is of extreme importance to us,” says Tom, co-founder of Scirra, “and ReliableSite has always provided this to us. Not only is the service great, but it’s also excellent value for money when comparing it to other hosts and cloud based services. They give generous amounts of bandwidth and the 1 Gbps ports are brilliant!”
About Scirra
Scirra is a game development company, where both founders have backgrounds in development and design. Their main software, Construct 2, is a HTML5 game development program for 2D games. It’s intended for game creators who want to avoid writing code, and instead use Construct 2 as a backbone. The games are published in HTML5 for desktop, Android, IOS and Windows.
Users downloaded Construct2 more than 2 million times as of summer 2015.
Hosting Requirements and Expectations
Scirra’s website consists of multiple parts, including the main page, an “Arcade” of user created games, a store for tools that help create games, a blog, and a server for their game downloads.
What they need:
- Support for high volumes of traffic to the different parts of their site.
- Dedicated hosting for Arcade games.
- Instant access to download their flagship game, Construct2.
- Fast connections to the UK and internationally.
- 4-core 3.2ghz servers with 8GB of RAM; SQL server license.
ReliableSite’s Dedicated Hosting
A relationship of more than four years is a vote of confidence. Here’s what ReliableSite provides for Scirra, and for all of our unique customers:
- Custom server builds: We purchase the latest hardware, and customize each dedicated server to the customer’s specifications, regardless of stock
- 24/7 hardware support: Our data center technicians are on site at all times of the day and night, weeknights or weekends, in the New York City metro area and Miami locations.
- MySQL licenses (and others)
- Premium network: We offer a dedicated 1 Gbps Port
- Great latency to various locations around the world (See Tom’s blog post on this here)
- DDoS protection: We offer free DDoS protection for up to 10 GB attacks. There is no hidden fee! This extra protection is included.
- Several dedicated servers with no contract or setup fees.
After Scirra’s first year hosting with ReliableSite, Tom submitted a positive review, stating that uptime was “excellent” and that ReliableSite’s dedicated servers were “nice and fast.” Scirra’s average page speed had decreased by a huge amount after the move. “It’s also a lot less volatile than our last host,” Tom wrote.
In addition to the glowing review, Tom wrote a blog post that detailed Scirra’s switch to ReliableSite and their increased website speed after their own server optimization. The post itself was an example of how their dedicated server supported their work. The post was read 20,000 times in 24 hours, according to Tom, “and the server didn’t break a sweat!”