Dedicated Servers

Some games, especially those that offer persistent role-playing style features, are hosted on dedicated servers only. The game's developer, or a service company that represents the developer, usually operates these servers. These games generally offer virtual environments where hundreds or thousands of players connect to the same world and interact in varying ways. This usually presents bandwidth and CPU costs well beyond the abilities of casual players and hobbyists looking for an evening's entertainment.

These sorts of "big iron" servers are often hosted on clustered servers at dedicated hosting service companies with battery-backup systems and racks and racks of computers.

This does not mean that you shouldn't offer your users the ability to run a dedicated server. There are many 16- or 32-player first-person shooter games on the market that have hordes of fans that run permanent 24/7 servers. Offering a dedicated server mode allows your users to run the servers on computers with less capability than they might otherwise use as their game-playing computer. That is to say, dedicated servers are an ideal way for users to utilize that two-year old computer sitting in the corner gathering dust!