Open-E Data Storage Solutions for Gaming Industry

We are fresh off of World Gaming Day, so it is a great opportunity to talk about something that most gamers don’t think about on a daily basis, yet what is a foundation for creating a great gaming experience available to anyone in the world.

This is: a good solution for data storage and protection.

Guess how many people play video games in 2023? It’s 2.7 billion worldwide, and it’s estimated that in 2027 this number will reach 3.1 billion. Video games are pretty common nowadays. It is both a blessing and a challenge for gaming companies as to stay on top and keep their audiences satisfied, creators must keep up with the evolving technology and a common demand for more realistic graphic design and smoother gameplay.

The process of game development is one side of the coin, but keeping the game alive, especially considering online genres, like MMO or MOBA, causes another bunch of challenges to deal with.

Let’s take a look at the importance of a good data storage solution for the most crucial processes in the gaming industry.

Video Game Creation

Video games are created by teams of different sizes, from small studios which work on Indie games, to major companies that create triple-A games. In this article we will focus on this second group especially, as their work is a great example of how important good data storage is for a game lifecycle.

Video games are created by people who work long and hard to provide the final product. It takes about 2 to 5 years to create a triple-A game. Let us repeat – 2 to 5 years of constant work performed by multiple teams.

How to Acquire Data Storage Invulnerability

Now imagine that one unfortunate click can make all that work go to trash. Ransomware attacks work just like that. Hackers can encrypt all the data on the system, stopping further work on the game and making it unable to use any files.

You have probably heard about at least a few cyber attacks in the gaming industry, the most known involving CD Projekt RED and Sony. These cases are a great lesson, especially for those who want to provide top-tier products and keep their company’s image untouched.

Fortunately, you can avoid such a scenario with a software solution that lets you roll back to the system status from before the attack. A great example of software that empowers you to do so is Open-E JovianDSS, which additionally lets you create a Retention Plan to generate Snapshots in a set period of time, so you can easily go to the previous version of the data system as you need.

Of course, there are also other threats to gaming projects, like human errors, which are one of the most common reasons for data loss. With the aforementioned tools you can revert any unwanted changes in your system.

Better Workflow in Game Creation

Delivering the game on the declared date is very important, especially for those who offer a pre-order version of the game. When players pay you in advance for something they don’t have yet, it is crucial to ensure that their particular commitment is treated in a serious and respectful way. You should catch every opportunity to increase the user satisfaction in contact with your products, even in the development stage!

To create the final game, you must also ensure that different teams effectively work together and push forward the fruit of their work. They should always be ready to check and correct any bugs and shortcomings to ultimately provide players with a top-quality product. To achieve that, creators must have constant and stable access to the latest version of data.

There are a few ways to ensure that stored and processed data will always be consistent and available for employee usage to push the project forward. The data protection starts on the “cellular” level with self-healing, which checks consistency of the data that is accessed frequently. For ensuring consistency of less often accessed data, it is good to use a scrubbing feature. Then, you can create redundant copies of the data scattered around multiple disks in a RAID configuration and create a mirrored version of the data on a second node in a cluster.

Video Game Maintenance & Expansion

By using the aforementioned tools, you create a safe and robust base for all the work that needs to be done to provide a high-quality video game to the users. When the game is distributed to wide audiences, it is time for another step, which is maybe even more important.

Using High-Availability To Gain High User Satisfaction

Even after executing a huge number of tests, on the premiere day, players often spot a lot of bugs. That’s why when a new game is released, it is very probable that the company will soon release a “Day One Patch” to fix all the major problems. Constant access to coherent data is a must have to quickly respond to the reported cases and fix any bugs.

High-availability of data is especially useful for games which are intended to grow in content over time. It is very probable that adding new elements to the game will affect the overall in-game experience, sometimes for the worse (for example by adding characters, items, or enemies that are overpowered, often called just broken). That’s why you always need to keep an eye on the user feedback and respond to community preferences.

Software-defined Storage Role in Game Expansion

When the team has already dealt with the major bugs, they need to take care of the current user experience in the game. A new challenge arises here, especially in the MMO and MOBA genres. They are strongly based on user accounts that contain data on players’ progress, unlocked and purchased items and extensions, their position in global rankings, reports about their behavior in the game and other important information. Every account holds its own data, and, especially in terms of rankings, it needs to be very precise and updated for a coherent experience for the whole game community.

Of course, all of this data needs to be stored somewhere. Considering the fact that an online game (especially right after release) will be getting more and more users ready to sign up, a scalable data storage that lets you flexibly extend the available space for data is a must have. This lets you avoid scenarios in which players can’t log in, because the servers are overloaded by other players. What can help here is creating a software-defined data storage system that gives you a lot of flexibility for choosing the hardware you can utilize to create the system and extend its space capacity. A good base for such a solution is Open-E JovianDSS, which was already used in over 40,000 implementations all around the world.

Level Up Your Data Storage!

Company growth means additional data storage needs. The gaming industry is especially demanding in these terms. If your company wants to develop multiple games and provide the best experience to all the players, you need to prepare for a lot of data to store and protect. No need to worry though, at Open-E we develop our software to ensure that your game creation processes go smoothly and without problems thanks to data storage solutions that support your creative work on a daily basis!

If you think about taking your data storage to the next level, feel free to try out our software – Open-E JovianDSS – with a 60-day Trial Version – and if you would like to unlock the full version, be sure to contact our sales team! We can help your company to get more achievements in the gaming industry and our specialists are ready to guide you and help you prepare to deal with any threat that can stand in your way.