Game servers

projects/{project}/locations/{location}/gameServers/{game_server}

Creating one

The only required field is game, and it must name a game that can be run — a branch of the catalogue like games/minecraft has nothing to install, and asking for a server of one is refused when you create it. plany games list --deployable server lists the games you can run.

Servers → New server → choose a game, a region and a machine type → Create

machine_type is the size, from the catalogue. Leave it empty and you get the smallest type that meets the game's own minimum. Add spot to run on spare capacity at 60% off. Set vpc to put the server on one of the project's private networks rather than the default; it is fixed at create, and players connect the same way either way. secrets puts a secret in the server's environment, or in a file, without the value passing through your configuration.

Creating returns a long-running operation; see Operations. The CLI waits for it unless you pass --wait=false.

States

state_message says, in a sentence, why the server is where it is. See GameServer.State.

Sleeping when nobody is playing

Set sleep_after_idle and a server with nobody on it goes to sleep after that long. A sleeping server is STOPPED, with a state_message saying it is asleep; it costs nothing to run and keeps its world — and the next player who connects to its address wakes it, usually in seconds.

1grpcurl -H "authorization: Bearer $PLANY_API_KEY" \
2  -d '{"game_server": {
3         "name": "projects/my-game/locations/eu-west-2/gameServers/my-server",
4         "sleep_after_idle": "900s"},
5       "update_mask": "sleep_after_idle"}' \
6  api.plany.cloud:443 plany.playpute.v1.PlayputeService/UpdateGameServer

A server is only put to sleep when Plany has actually seen it empty: no player on it, no connection open, nobody waiting to join, for the whole of sleep_after_idle. A server whose players Plany cannot yet see — see Players and sessions — stays awake rather than being put to sleep on a guess. The clock restarts when the server wakes, so a connection that wakes a server and then leaves gives it a fresh sleep_after_idle before it sleeps again. A server whose game has told the Agones SDK it is allocated or reserved is somebody's match, and is never put to sleep. Zero, the default, keeps a server awake.

sleep_after_idle is set through the API. A server you stopped yourself also wakes when a player connects to it.

Ephemeral servers

ephemeral: true keeps nothing. The world and everything on disk go when the server stops.

That is the right shape for a match rather than a world: a minigame round has nothing worth carrying into the next one. An ephemeral server cannot sleep — it has nothing to wake into — so sleep_after_idle is refused on one.

Who can reach it

exposure decides who can reach the server, and also cannot be changed after creation.

Internal is the right choice for a fleet behind a matchmaker: a public address on each member would be an entry point nobody intended.

Identity

Leave service_account empty and Plany creates one per server, granted roles/playpute.gameServerAgent on that server and nothing else. A server runs your own code and mods, so the identity it holds reaches exactly the one thing it needs.

Set it to a service account you own and the server acts as that instead. The point is a fleet: grant one service account a role somewhere else, attach it to twenty servers, and those twenty can use it while the rest of the account cannot.

Starting, stopping and deleting

Servers → the server → Start, Stop, Restart or Delete

All four return long-running operations.

Changing a server

display_name, settings, secrets, sleep_after_idle, machine_type and spot can be changed on an existing server. Settings and secrets reach the game the next time it launches; a new machine type or spot setting takes effect on the server's next start. game, ephemeral, exposure and vpc cannot be changed — create a new server instead.

Reading a server back

GetGameServer gives you state, state_message, endpoints, machine_type, resources, build and, for a spot server, spot_status. Who is playing on it is presence.

instance is an identifier for the machine behind the server. It is output-only and not something you act on — quote it if you are asking Plany about a specific server.

What it costs

A running server is charged for its machine type's vCPUs and memory and for its disk, by the minute. A stopped or sleeping server is not charged for any of them. See What it costs and Machine types.