Lack of dedicated game servers in India, How and what it affects? and What can be done about it?

Kaching999

Kaching999

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The Indian gaming scene as been on a huge uprising especially since the last few years but the lack of dedicated serves for a lot of online games has been a big hurdle we have not been able to cross, there are some games which do have dedicated servers but most of the online games especially the competitive ones don't. Some like Fortnite afaik have even removed or abandoned their pre-existing serves here.

How many such games have you faced a similar issue with?

What games do have such dedicated serves which work well that you know of?

Also what can be done about this how to either mitigate the high ping caused by offshore severs or get the companies to make them available here?

What type of regulations if know of any does the Government impose?

Here are some about which I know:

Fortnite: Removed its Mumbai servers in 2020, pushing players to Middle East/Europe or Singapore (80-150ms)
Apex Legends: Connects to Singapore/Bahrain (100–150ms)
Call of Duty: Warzone: Middle East/Asia servers (80–120ms)
Rainbow Six Siege: Southeast Asia servers (~90–120ms)
Overwatch 2: Singapore servers (~80–120ms)
Dota 2/League of Legends: Southeast Asia servers (~70–100ms)
CS:GO : No Indian servers, but Singapore/Dubai (~60–80ms) are manageable
Rocket League: Middle East/Asia servers (~80–100ms)

This also greatly impacts the growth of esports as well as our ability to globally compete in them.
 
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IMO, a lot of multiplayer games are P2W these days. These gaming companies invest in those regions who spend a lot of money to power up or apply some lame skin. Some of the games I played has big spenders from Middle East, South East Asia and East Asian countries. The devs ensured those regions got the best experience.

In India, we are mostly F2P players, that does not incentivize the game companies to invest in data centers to host locally.
 
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kalph09 said:
In India, we are mostly F2P players, that does not incentivize the game companies to invest in data centers to host locally.
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Agreed but don't you think if the government helped subsidize the cost of setting up servers here as they are very costly due to the law making it necessary for the companies to maintain data locally it would incentivize them and could help create jobs in such places as well as esports.

Also that being said the notion that we are F2P is changing rapidly, look at the growth of streaming culture in India in the last 5 years, also there are reports which suggest that India's gaming market is expected to reach $ 9.2 billion by 2028-29.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com...fy29-lumikai-report/articleshow/115188845.cms
 
I play Fortnite, and it's quite annoying that the players I get teamed up with are Arabic speakers. Most of them don't know English well, and I don't speak Arabic either.
 
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Husky said:
I play Fortnite, and it's quite annoying that the players I get teamed up with are Arabic speakers. Most of them don't know English well, and I don't speak Arabic either.
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Tell me about it........... I used to NBA2k during lockdown times and get matched up with people on the European and American server and they were just straight up racist, making the usual call centre scammer and curry jokes.
 
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If there is dedicated servers infrastructure and the tools to host one are easily accessible, trust me there will be plenty of Indian servers in games

Back in 2017/18 I recall a few Call of duty clients like iw4x, iw4play, repziw4, alteriw4net Rocket V2 (mods which allow for a dedicated server client/browser to connect to, think of it like valve's community servers) having Indian servers and they were decently populated as well.
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Back when teamspeak/skype was more common than discord is these days.

Can't believe it's been 8 years almost now, it used to be alteriwnet? Repziw4 and some other codmw clients. Even I had a small little isnipe server on iw4x which a german friend of mine helped me run at his home in berlin lol. Seeing such talented reverse engineers and developers from the US and throughout different european countries (with most of them in college or still in highschool) being able to code and create such unique mods, even open source them at times, gah! a part of me wanted to be like them and I got inspired to start learning python in 2018 after having spoken to one of the devs asking how he started, even did some .gsc scripting (all gibberish to me now) and promptly enough my PC decided to die ending that thought.

A funny video back then, where a bunch of users of repziw4 got mass banned for using hacks. Admins decided to prank them by saying they would unban them if they made an apology video. Apology videos were made but the unbans were not.

These sort of pub servers or community servers on CS 1.6, TF2 and CSGO (CS2 also has a few now I believe) were really fun back in the day. I can see why most corporations would much rather have most of their monetisation channels and the multiplayer side strictly under their control (I've seen this start after the release of GTA online, cs go in 2013 etc) but it does take the natural fun out of multiplayer games where the only cost you had to worry about was the internet bill you paid per month. Ranks? What's that? Just hit the tilde key to open the console in iw4x and type unlockall. Guns locked behind a level? Commandscript in console lmao. CS2 still has these servers but it's been pushed so far behind the main screen of the game, most people don't even discover it unless they try to seek it out themselves.

This is also why I'm behind supporting such talented modders/devs to crack the modern multiplayer games and create a seperate dedicated server based client for the sake of protecting and preserving the games. Another 10 years and battlefield 1 probably won't have it's servers up and running anymore and EA won't give 2 shits about it. In the same manner, there is a dedicated client for battlefield bad company 2 but I'm unsure how that is doing currently. Honestly it seems the newer fanbases don't really care much about the fact that their games may not be sitting there for them 10 years down the line. Once the parent company decides they've cashed as much as they could out of a game, they'll pull the plug without thinking twice. Tech has become so homogenous.
On the other hand, there's more people with access to phones and in turn access to mobile games. But those type of games are just so sterilised.
 
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Rezep said:
funny video back then, where a bunch of users of repziw4 got mass banned for using hacks. Admins decided to prank them by saying they would unban them if they made an apology video. Apology videos were made but the unbans were not.
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Nice :tearsofjoy::tearsofjoy::tearsofjoy:
Rezep said:
These sort of pub servers or community servers on CS 1.6, TF2 and CSGO (CS2 also has a few now I believe) were really fun back in the day. I can see why most corporations would much rather have most of their monetisation channels and the multiplayer side strictly under their control (I've seen this start after the release of GTA online, cs go in 2013 etc) but it does take the natural fun out of multiplayer games where the only cost you had to worry about was the internet bill you paid per month. Ranks? What's that? Just hit the tilde key to open the console in iw4x and type unlockall. Guns locked behind a level? Commandscript in console lmao. CS2 still has these servers but it's been pushed so far behind the main screen of the game, most people don't even discover it unless they try to seek it out themselves.
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Yeah and that is to be expected of them as they are companies after all but them going out of their way to shut down some those was a d*ck move. Tbf there are some rp servers on FiveM now and some dedicated for India too but then there is also the lengthy process of applications and que times.
Rezep said:
Another 10 years and battlefield 1 probably won't have it's servers up and running anymore and EA won't give 2 shits about it
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It already happend with The Crew and Ghost Recon.
Rezep said:
Honestly it seems the newer fanbases don't really care much about the fact that their games may not be sitting there for them 10 years down the line
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They have never even experienced the same freedom there was with games back in the day so to them it just seems like the norm. And trust me they will start noticing when more and more games have their servers shut down.
Rezep said:
On the other hand, there's more people with access to phones and in turn access to mobile games. But those type of games are just so sterilised.
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That might happen on IOS but on Androids with all the different versions it's going to just as hard to implement as on the pc, especially in case of ports like ac:mirage as the games get bigger and bigger and mobile processors are pretty far way from catching up to the dekstop counter parts at least in phones, we could see more and more dedicated gaming phones coming out in the future though.
 
I host some CS2, Minecraft, SAMP, VCMP and other game servers. Still get many players in those. The interest remains.

The biggest thing that can be done about this is bringing back the ability to just host your own server. People would do it. But of course, if the game is hell bent on microtransactions, this is not something they'd want.
 
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Lack of dedicated game servers in India, How and what it affects
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gaming pc is out of reach for common people, having a PC is luxury in this country. Other RAM is free and excellent political fodder compared to seal-packed RAM.
we pay 18% GST on internet access..
As result the generation flocked to mobile gambling & betting apps, making team in dream 11 to earn 10rupees.

With no audience/business why the publishers even want to waste money in servers costs.
MENA has larger player base compares to India. Freefire generate lot more rev from BD compared to IN.
Indian are busy with something else, which is not appropriate to mention in open forums.

What can be done about it?
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NOTHING
not in our lifetime.
wa unkils need to get mukti, and late-alphas attain a voting age and elect a educated govt.( 50% chance) the educated govt need at-least a decade to fill up the holes.
So at minimum we are looking at 25 -35 years.
 
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Gaming companies have the numbers to justify whether a game needs an Indian server.

This is distribution of interest in game per country for Marvel Rivals. India which has one of the highest population in the world is not even in the list and cant even beat Vietnam or Indonesia. Its a free game so there is no AAA pricing. But it does need a minimum 1060 or a 2060 recommended to run. With such low interest its not in the interest of a company to prioritize Indian servers.

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Mobile phones on the other hand have been become common place which is why mobile games are targeting India. PC or Console gaming would need a bit more time.

I am an oldie who organized and competed in Unreal Tournaments and CS competitions back in my uni days more than 15-18 years ago. Still remember reaching 5th in UT in IIT mumbai techfest competition. We had no steam or high speed internet then. Everyone ran pirated versions. I still remember buying my first games with The Orange Box after getting my first job.
 
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Ramadhir Singh said:
gaming pc is out of reach for common people, having a PC is luxury in this country. Other RAM is free and excellent political fodder compared to seal-packed RAM.
we pay 18% GST on internet access..
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:tearsofjoy: :tearsofjoy: Nice humour but, we have pretty good internet rates especially in urban regions which are rapidly expanding as compared to most other countries and it is quite stable too for its price.

And yeah PCs are expensive, but they can be obtained for much cheaper if you look at the used market, which is also expanding you can get a decent pc to play lighter esports titles like DOTA, Overwatch, CS, Valorant etc. easily for about 20-25k which is also the price of a decent mid range phone. The problem is the fear of loosing money and getting scammed there which tbf does happen but the other problem is that the younger generation is starting to lose their curiosity in pcs and hence loosing the knowledge on how to obtain one, earlier I used to see a pc in nearly every home but slowly they have been replaced by mobile phones, tablets or laptops and for gaming everyone has adopted a console.
Ramadhir Singh said:
As result the generation flocked to mobile gambling & betting apps, making team in dream 11 to earn 10rupees.

With no audience/business why the publishers even want to waste money in servers costs.
MENA has larger player base compares to India. Freefire generate lot more rev from BD compared to IN.
Indian are busy with something else, which is not appropriate to mention in open forums.
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Believe it or not in raw number India still has a large player base which is increasing especially on the console side of things not as much as mobile games but still increasing, which is why Epic had earlier opened servers here but then had to close down due to changed government regulations and that is also why EA FC and Valorant still have dedicated servers here despite the high cost of maintenance.

Actually the thing about BD spending more on free fire is false and I don't know where you got that from cause this article actually says otherwise:
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Ramadhir Singh said:
late-alphas attain a voting age and elect a educated govt.( 50% chance)
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Yeah that is surely not happening, if you just want to get a glimpse of the brain rot that has been flowing through the minds of teens these days just open twitter or instagram and try not to punch as hole through your screen, it's not going to be easy. Every time I stupidly go there expecting something new it's the same old sh*t, somehow it has gotten worse since covid times.

Ramadhir Singh said:
So at minimum we are looking at 25 -35 years.
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Hope it happens before I turn 30.
ronnie_gogs said:
Gaming companies have the numbers to justify whether a game needs an Indian server.

This is distribution of interest in game per country for Marvel Rivals. India which has one of the highest population in the world is not even in the list and cant even beat Vietnam or Indonesia. Its a free game so there is no AAA pricing. But it does need a minimum 1060 or a 2060 recommended to run. With such low interest its not in the interest of a company to prioritize Indian servers.
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Marvels rivals is not a great example though cause the actual optimization in the game is dogwater, it has overwatch type graphics and gets like 35-40fps on 1080p low and is also quite new, I am mainly concerned about games which do have a relatively big player base here and still don't have dedicated servers.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianGaming/comments/1hghf5n/is_it_true_that_no_one_or_very_low_player_count
 
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Ramadhir Singh said:
gaming pc is out of reach for common people, having a PC is luxury in this country. Other RAM is free and excellent political fodder compared to seal-packed RAM.
we pay 18% GST on internet access..
As result the generation flocked to mobile gambling & betting apps, making team in dream 11 to earn 10rupees.
Click to expand...
ronnie_gogs said:
I am an oldie who organized and competed in Unreal Tournaments and CS competitions back in my uni days more than 15-18 years ago. Still remember reaching 5th in UT in IIT mumbai techfest competition. We had no steam or high speed internet then. Everyone ran pirated versions. I still remember buying my first games with The Orange Box after getting my first job.
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It's kinda funny that my anecdotal experience comes from the combination of both your statements. I made the aforementioned CSGO, SAMP etc servers during my school & uni days. And also developed a way that you could have SSO login and then connect all your different accounts to one account to see your stats, etc

Back then, I had what most would call a mid-tier gaming PC (which wasn't mine 'technically', it was more like the family PC that I made), which was really good, but it couldn't run, for example, CSGO at max settings with over 100fps consistently.

But now, times have changed. I have RTX 4070 + 9800X3D, Gigabyte M27QX, and the last 5 games I played are:
  1. ETS2
  2. GRIS
  3. Dishonored 2
  4. Plucky Squire
  5. F1 2016
Back then, I had sub-50Mbps internet via ADSL2, now I have Gigabit speeds. I have the means, but I don't have the time or mood to play competitively or deal with the toxicity anymore. I play (imo very nice) games, which I can leave and pick up whenever I want.

Basically, now that I have a high-end gaming PC, I'm no longer into AAA or multiplayer games. The same is true for most of my friends now as well. That could be a major factor as well, I suppose. The people wanting to play Marvels or any of the recent high-requirements-yet-shitty games don't have the hardware to do so, and the people having the hardware don't play games like those anymore?

Is my hardware overkill for what games I play? Probably. But I enjoy building and using it. And I have other uses aside from gaming, but let's ignore that for now.

I do agree that mobile gaming is more accessible, just saying that India probably has a lot of PC gamers... just ones that might not be very interested in new/multiplayer games.

I still do maintain some of those servers, though not as many during the peak years. Dedicated hosting costs a pretty penny, but it's worth it seeing so many people play and enjoy :D
Co-location of physical servers got kinda inaccessible nowadays, or maybe I'm just looking at the wrong places. For example, CtrlS needs more than a few servers and then they'll hook you up, which is both expensive and very unnecessary, it was kinda easier back in the day.
It's also kind of my side project dream to have a "brand" setup where you can log in via SSO (Discord, Steam, Itch, Google and Microsoft/Xbox), and have access to a wide variety of hosted game servers. But maybe I'll do that after I'm older and have more free time.
The only thing that doesn't run custom code so far is the Minecraft server, mostly because I kinda got fed up learning how to work and test with the Spigot API haha

So yeah, I'm still for the idea that the best way is to just let people host their own damn dedicated servers. What's wrong with it.
 
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Kaching999 said:
The Indian gaming scene as been on a huge uprising especially since the last few years but the lack of dedicated serves for a lot of online games has been a big hurdle we have not been able to cross, there are some games which do have dedicated servers but most of the online games especially the competitive ones don't. Some like Fortnite afaik have even removed or abandoned their pre-existing serves here.

How many such games have you faced a similar issue with?

What games do have such dedicated serves which work well that you know of?

Also what can be done about this how to either mitigate the high ping caused by offshore severs or get the companies to make them available here?

What type of regulations if know of any does the Government impose?

Here are some about which I know:

Fortnite: Removed its Mumbai servers in 2020, pushing players to Middle East/Europe or Singapore (80-150ms)
Apex Legends: Connects to Singapore/Bahrain (100–150ms)
Call of Duty: Warzone: Middle East/Asia servers (80–120ms)
Rainbow Six Siege: Southeast Asia servers (~90–120ms)
Overwatch 2: Singapore servers (~80–120ms)
Dota 2/League of Legends: Southeast Asia servers (~70–100ms)
CS:GO : No Indian servers, but Singapore/Dubai (~60–80ms) are manageable
Rocket League: Middle East/Asia servers (~80–100ms)

This also greatly impacts the growth of esports as well as our ability to globally compete in them.
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My guess is lack of "profitable" playerbase , that reminds me that none of the global esports competitions are hosted in India ( let me know if I am wrong )
 
kalph09 said:
IMO, a lot of multiplayer games are P2W these days. These gaming companies invest in those regions who spend a lot of money to power up or apply some lame skin. Some of the games I played has big spenders from Middle East, South East Asia and East Asian countries. The devs ensured those regions got the best experience.

In India, we are mostly F2P players, that does not incentivize the game companies to invest in data centers to host locally.
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I've spent a lot of time playing multiplayer games without Indian servers - (Apex ~ 1700 hrs , PUBG - ~400 hrs ) . Big Multiplayer games are not P2W , I played Delta force and Marvel Rivals recently and the only thing you can spend money on is skins . IMO we don't get Indian servers because there just aren't enough Indian players . The Indian gaming community will pick a game or 2 when it comes to online multiplayer games and that will be the only game every Indian gamer will play (CS2 , Valo and GTA 5 rn) . It's tiresome playing online games with randoms so most people stick to these 3 games .

This leaves no reason for the companies to invest in Indian servers , its as simple as that .
 
KAKAN said:
I still do maintain some of those servers, though not as many during the peak years. Dedicated hosting costs a pretty penny, but it's worth it seeing so many people play and enjoy :D
Co-location of physical servers got kinda inaccessible nowadays, or maybe I'm just looking at the wrong places. For example, CtrlS needs more than a few servers and then they'll hook you up, which is both expensive and very unnecessary, it was kinda easier back in the day.
It's also kind of my side project dream to have a "brand" setup where you can log in via SSO (Discord, Steam, Itch, Google and Microsoft/Xbox), and have access to a wide variety of hosted game servers. But maybe I'll do that after I'm older and have more free time.
The only thing that doesn't run custom code so far is the Minecraft server, mostly because I kinda got fed up learning how to work and test with the Spigot API haha

So yeah, I'm still for the idea that the best way is to just let people host their own damn dedicated servers. What's wrong with it.
Click to expand...

Dedicated private servers are great and is a great solution for many. I have thousand of hours on Rust and Minecraft and I only played on private servers. But all of these are non competitive games with no skill based matchmaking and ranking. Most the games OP mentioned have skill based matchmaking games with ranking. Their is a big difference between playing PUBs vs a high ranked lobby. Private servers can rarely provide that as player pool is limited.

High skill based private servers do exist for CSGO and some also have Indian servers. Faceit is a great service which seems to have mumbai server but again it depends on player pool. If you are Global Elite or Master level player than you need 9 more players of same skill level for a match and more players of same class to enjoy more variety. CS is much better on private servers as anticheat is better than valve anticheat. If you are serious about CSGO2 then maybe you can try playing on the faceit servers. (Unless they are closed already due to low player count).

If anyone is aware on any good private servers for scrims please share.
 
Hey, faceit isn't closed btw. And yes, there are many players in higher ranking in faceit India servers as well.
While self hosted servers might not be as good as official competitive ones, you don't need them to be private only. You can make them public and people of all ranking play there.

This is especially true of CSGO community, where many global elites reached out to me to create a separate short-lived private server for their competitive matchmaking. They handled the admin stuff and all, I just provided plug-ins and the server. It was a great experience. And it's not just 1 or 2 times, it happens all the time to the point where I made a system for automatically creating a private server for a fixed price lol
It's not active anymore, but it shows. If companies provide self hosting and no official servers, people will find a way. If the game is any good, ofcourse.
 
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