Metaplay Managed Services: Cloud Hosting for Live Service Games

What Are Metaplay Managed Services?

Metaplay Managed Services is Metaplay's cloud hosting offering for game studios. Instead of provisioning and managing your own server infrastructure, Metaplay hosts your game's backend environments on your behalf — so you can focus on building your game rather than operating servers.

With Managed Services, your game runs on Metaplay's production-grade infrastructure, complete with pre-configured observability, logging, access control, and operations tooling. You get dedicated development, staging, and production environments depending on your plan, all managed through the Metaplay Portal.

What You Get

• Cloud-hosted environments — Development, staging, and production servers provisioned and maintained by Metaplay
• The full Metaplay SDK — Unity client library, C# game server, and LiveOps Dashboard
• Automatic scaling — Production environments scale with your player base
• Pre-configured observability — Logging, monitoring, and alerting out of the box
• Access to the Metaplay Portal — Manage your projects, environments, and team from one place

Why Use Managed Hosting for Your Game Backend?

Building and maintaining game server infrastructure is a significant undertaking. A typical live service game backend requires expertise in Kubernetes, cloud networking, database management, CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, and security — none of which directly contributes to making your game better.

Metaplay Managed Services eliminates this operational burden so your team can stay focused on gameplay, content, and player experience. The key benefits include:

• Ship faster — Skip months of infrastructure setup and deploy to the cloud in minutes via the Metaplay Portal
• Stay lean — No need to hire dedicated DevOps or infrastructure engineers for your backend
• Scale reliably — Production infrastructure battle-tested to handle tens of millions of DAU
• Reduce risk — Metaplay's team monitors and maintains your infrastructure, with support packages available for direct engineer access

Self-Hosting Option: Private Cloud

For studios that need full control over their infrastructure, Metaplay Private Cloud offers a self-hosted alternative. You get full use of the Metaplay SDK with deployments on your own dedicated servers — ideal for studios operating at massive scale (1M+ DAU) or those with specific compliance requirements.

Metaplay Pricing Plans

Metaplay offers plans for every stage of game development, from local prototyping through to global live service. All paid plans include cloud-hosted environments managed by Metaplay.

Free — Build and Run Locally

Start building with the full Metaplay SDK at no cost. Run your game server locally, develop offline, and evaluate the platform with sample projects or your own game. No cloud environments — purely for local development and evaluation.

• Full Metaplay SDK usage
• Local server development
• Access to the Metaplay Portal
• Community support via Discord

Starter — €195/month

For solo developers or teams of two who want to prototype in the cloud. Ideal for validating your game's server-side features in a live environment before committing to full development.

• 1 mini cloud environment
• Capped at 5 DAU
• Full Metaplay SDK usage
• Sign up directly in the Metaplay Portal

Pre-launch — €995/month

For small teams in early development. Get two cloud environments to develop and test your game with enough capacity for internal playtesting.

• 2 small cloud environments
• Capped at 100 DAU
• Full Metaplay SDK usage
• Add-on development environments available
• Sign up directly in the Metaplay Portal

Production — €1,985/month

For launching and scaling live games. Includes dedicated staging and production environments with unlimited DAU capacity. A variable license fee applies as your player base grows.

• 2 small development environments
• 1 large staging environment
• 1 scalable production environment
• Unlimited DAU (first 5,000 DAU included, then €2.95 per 1,000 DAU)
• Add-on environments available
• Sign up directly in the Metaplay Portal

Private Cloud — Custom Pricing

For enterprise teams self-hosting at massive scale. Environments tailored to your needs, with a reduced per-DAU license fee of €2 per 1,000 DAU.

• Unlimited DAU
• Custom environment configuration
• Self-managed deployments
• Contact us to discuss your requirements

Metaplay Support Plans

Every Metaplay customer gets free access to community support via Discord. For teams that need direct access to Metaplay engineers, paid support packages are available as add-ons to any plan.

Community — Free

Access to the Metaplay Discord server for help from the community and Metaplay team members.

Standard — €1,500/month

Direct engineer access during business hours (09–17h weekdays). Includes the Metaplay Portal ticketing system, 1:1 email support, next business day response guarantee, and an onboarding session.

Dedicated — €5,000/month

Priority support with same-day response, a private Slack channel, 2 engineer days per month for hands-on project help, and an onboarding session.

Tailored — Custom Pricing

Custom support arrangements including bespoke availability, custom engineer hours, and hands-on codebase help. Contact us to discuss.

How to Get Started with Metaplay

Getting started with Metaplay is straightforward:

1. Download the SDK — Install the Metaplay CLI and initialize a new project, or integrate the SDK into an existing Unity project
2. Build locally — Develop your game server locally with one-command startup (dotnet run) — no Docker or database setup required
3. Deploy to the cloud — When you're ready to test in the cloud, sign up for a Starter or Pre-launch plan in the Metaplay Portal
4. Scale to production — Upgrade to the Production plan when you're ready for soft launch or global release

The Free tier gives you unlimited time to evaluate the SDK, build features, and run your game locally. There's no pressure to upgrade until you need cloud environments for team testing or player-facing deployments.

Get started with Metaplay Free →

Sign in to the Metaplay Portal →

Metaplay Managed Services FAQ

Is there a free trial of the cloud environments?

There's no time-limited trial, but the Free tier lets you build and evaluate the full Metaplay SDK locally for as long as you need. When you're ready for cloud hosting, you can upgrade to a paid plan through the Metaplay Portal.

Can I switch between plans?

Yes. You can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time through the Metaplay Portal. Moving from Pre-launch to Production adds staging and production environments to your project.

What happens if I exceed my DAU cap?

On the Starter and Pre-launch plans, DAU is capped at 5 and 100 respectively. On the Production plan, DAU is unlimited — you pay a variable fee of €2.95 per 1,000 DAU beyond the first 5,000 included in your base fee.

Do I need to manage Kubernetes or AWS myself?

No. With Managed Services, Metaplay handles all infrastructure management including Kubernetes orchestration, database operations, monitoring, and updates. You interact with your environments through the Metaplay Portal and LiveOps Dashboard.

Can I migrate from Managed Services to self-hosting later?

Yes. The Private Cloud plan supports self-hosted deployments on your own infrastructure. Metaplay's architecture is designed to be portable, so you can migrate when your scale or requirements demand it.

What game engines does Metaplay support?

Metaplay's client SDK is built for Unity. The game server is written in C# and is fully programmable — you have full source access to extend and customize it for your game's needs.