5 Years Building a Game Backend-as-a-Service: What We've Learned

As Teemu Haila puts it, "Building a backend is one of the hardest technical and strategic challenges in game development. If I'd known five years ago what I was about to get myself into, I might have picked an easier way to spend my working days."

Why Scaling Is the Real Backend Challenge for Live Games

When Metaplay started, backend solutions already existed to help developers launch online games. But launching was never the problem - scaling was. "The moment a game climbed the top-grossing charts, teams would hit a wall," Teemu explains. "The backend that got them there would suddenly start buckling under the weight of reality."

The industry had seen it happen time and again: a studio would find success, only to face two painful choices - rebuild their backend from scratch or patch together temporary fixes and live with growing inefficiencies. Neither was an attractive option.

What struck Teemu and his team was that every successful game studio - from Supercell to Small Giant - had independently built their own backend solutions, and despite using different tools and technologies, they all arrived at fundamentally similar architectures. "It became clear that there was an optimal way to build a game backend - one that allowed flexibility, scalability, and full control from day one."

Why Programmability Is Non-Negotiable for Game Backends

In the past five years, few lessons have been as resounding as this one: a backend that developers can't see, modify, or extend is a backend that will eventually become a liability. "If your backend forces you to work around rigid APIs or wait for a vendor to support a critical feature, you're already losing," says Teemu.

Live games are living, breathing entities. They evolve, adapt, and grow in ways no developer can fully anticipate. The only way to ensure a game remains future-proof is by building a backend that allows for full programmability - where developers have the freedom to optimize and customize the system to fit their needs.

Why Traditional 'Best Practices' Often Fail at Game Scale

Scaling a live game isn't just about handling more players; it's about handling them correctly. Teemu recalls a war story that underscores this point. A game team enabled a database write-ahead log (WAL) - a best practice in web development - to ensure data integrity. But at the scale of a live game, this mechanism began choking the database, leading to a cascading failure. "Even AWS's premium support wasn't able to help," Teemu notes. "We had to dig deep into the internals of the database implementation to find a fix."

The takeaway? What works in traditional web applications doesn't always translate to games. "Scaling databases for live games requires specialized knowledge," Teemu warns. "Traditional solutions often don't fit our world."

How Vertical Integration Creates a Cohesive Backend System

One of the biggest backend misconceptions is that success comes down to a single 'killer feature.' But as Teemu puts it, "It's not about one thing - it's about how everything works together."

At Metaplay, backend features are deeply integrated into a cohesive system. Take error messages, for example: rather than just making them clearer, the team embedded them into dashboards, customer support tools, and infrastructure monitoring. Their command-line interface isn't just a utility -- it's an entry point for logs, debugging, and automation.

"If you don't think holistically about how all these elements interact, you'll end up with a backend that feels like a collection of unrelated parts. That's a recipe for friction, not scalability." -- Teemu Haila

Why Game Networking Will Always Surprise You

For those used to building traditional web applications, networking in online games can be a rude awakening. Performance expectations are higher, failure cases are more extreme, and unpredictable constraints abound.

One of the unexpected hurdles Metaplay encountered was AWS's lack of IPv6 support. "Players would boot up a game on Android, get assigned an IPv6-only address, and suddenly... nothing worked," Teemu recalls. The solution? A custom tunneling system to ensure seamless connectivity. And that was just one of many surprises in a domain where mobile network instability, packet loss, and abrupt disconnections are the norm.

Why You Should Think Beyond Today's Backend Problems

As Teemu points out, "A backend that works for a prototype isn't necessarily suited for a live game." Too many studios start with quick-and-dirty backend solutions, only to realize too late that they need to rebuild.

To avoid this fate, Teemu's advice is clear: invest in the right foundation early, even if it feels like over-engineering at the time. The cost of rebuilding later is always higher.

How AI Is Shaping the Future of Game Backend Development

Looking ahead, one of the most exciting developments in backend technology is the integration of AI — not just as a feature for players, but as a tool for developers building and operating live games.

At Metaplay, we've already built MetaplayGPT — an AI-powered tool that gives developers conversational access to our entire SDK, source code, and technical guides. Using reasoning models and custom retrieval systems, MetaplayGPT lets developers get production-ready answers about backend architecture without navigating hundreds of documentation pages. Early testers have used it to solve real production problems in minutes rather than hours.

But documentation is just the beginning. We're actively exploring how AI can enhance the backend itself — from intelligent game config suggestions and automated anomaly detection to AI-assisted LiveOps that can identify player behaviour patterns and recommend interventions. The same principles that made our backend successful — programmability, vertical integration, and observability — are exactly what make it well-suited for AI-driven features.

As Teemu sees it, "AI won't replace the need for great engineering. But it will massively amplify the impact that good backend architecture can have. The studios with the best foundations will benefit the most from AI — because AI needs structured, well-documented, observable systems to work with."

The Backend as an Enabler of Long-Term Game Success

After five years of solving some of the hardest problems in game backend development, Teemu sees one fundamental truth: "A backend is an enabler of long-term success - the best games need to be built on the best systems."

The right backend decisions - full programmability, vertical integration, observability, and resilience - can make or break a game's ability to scale and thrive. And for those still on the journey, Teemu's advice is simple: don't build a backend for today, build one that can handle the unknowns of tomorrow.

Game Backend FAQ

What makes game backends different from regular web backends?

Game backends face unique challenges including real-time networking requirements, massive concurrent player loads, complex state management, and the need for zero-downtime updates. Traditional web best practices like database WAL logging can actually cause failures at game scale.

Should I build my own game backend or use a service?

Building from scratch gives full control but requires significant expertise and time. A backend-as-a-service with full programmability offers the best of both worlds: pre-built infrastructure with the ability to customize and extend as your game evolves.

How do I future-proof my game's backend architecture?

Focus on three principles: full programmability (so you can adapt to unforeseen needs), vertical integration (so all components work together seamlessly), and scalable infrastructure (so growth doesn't require a rebuild).

Why do so many game backends fail at scale?

Most failures come from using solutions designed for prototypes or web applications without considering live game requirements. When a game succeeds, the sudden increase in players exposes architectural limitations that are expensive and time-consuming to fix retroactively.