Video walkthrough: Set up a multiplayer game server with Google Cloud

Imagine that you’re playing a video game with a friend, hosting the game on your own machine. You’re both having a great time—until you need to shut down your computer and the game world ceases to exist for everyone until you’re back online. With a multiplayer server in the cloud, you can solve this problem and create persistent, shared access that doesn’t depend on your online status. 

To show you how to do this, we’ve created a video that takes you through the steps to set up a private virtual, multiplayer game server with Google Cloud, with no prior experience required.

In this video, we walk through the real-world situation described above, in which one of our team members wants to create a persistent shared gaming experience with a friend. One of our training experts shows his colleague step-by-step how to use Compute Engine to host a multiplayer instance of Valheim from Iron Gate Studio and Coffee Stain Studios.

This tutorial doesn’t assume that you’ve done this before. Along with our in-house novice, you’ll be guided through the process to create a virtual machine on Google Cloud Platform and configure it to connect to remote computers. Then, using Valheim as an example, we’ll show you how to set up a dedicated game server. The video also takes you through decisions about user settings and permissions, such as whether you want to allow multiple parties to manage the cloud host, and security considerations to keep in mind. We’ll talk about resource requirements and possibilities for scaling up, and break down some of the factors that will influence the cost, including a detailed explanation of the specifications we used in our walkthrough scenario. 

Ready to play? Check out the Create Valheim Game Server with Google Cloud walkthrough video: