Game Platform Cloud Migration

Case Overview

Chongqing MiLiMiLi Technology Co., Ltd. (MiLiMiLi) is a game development company focused on the Chinese-speaking regions of Southeast Asia, dedicated to providing simulation and puzzle games for players in these areas. Initially, the company deployed its business system on self-built servers in Singapore, using EC2 servers to support login, business, and payment processes, RDS to store customer information and transaction data, S3 to store images and dynamic videos, and CDN to accelerate user access. They also planned to deploy WAF and Shield for enhanced security protection. As the business developed, they initially expected to serve around 10,000 users, with a total user base projected to reach 50,000 and daily active users around 10,000, considering setting up backup nodes in Malaysia. However, the traditional architecture gradually exposed many problems. To address these challenges, Lianyunyi designed a cross-regional high-availability, elastic scaling, and multi-layered security architecture solution based on AWS global infrastructure, helping the client achieve efficient expansion in the Southeast Asian market.

Background

Since its establishment, MiLiMiLi has been deeply rooted in the Chinese-speaking gaming market in Southeast Asia, with simulation and puzzle games as core products, aiming to create an interesting gaming world for players. As a small and medium-sized enterprise, the company has limitations in funding and resources, but its core gaming system has the capability to handle high-concurrency requests and provide players with a smooth gaming experience. With the growing demand in the Southeast Asian Chinese-speaking gaming market, the company decided to further expand its business to cover more Southeast Asian regions. However, the traditional architecture of self-built servers in Singapore has increasingly exposed its drawbacks as user numbers continue to rise, seriously constraining business development and urgently requiring cloud migration to achieve architecture upgrade and optimization.

Customer Challenges

1. Cross-Regional Access Latency: Servers deployed in Singapore nodes cause significant latency for users in other Southeast Asian regions (such as Malaysia), with average latency exceeding 500ms. As business expands to other Southeast Asian regions, this problem will be further exacerbated. During peak gaming periods, network fluctuations cause severe player operation delays, greatly affecting gaming experience and reducing user satisfaction and retention rates.
2. Architecture Scalability Bottleneck: The existing architecture is concentrated in Singapore nodes, creating single point of failure risks. As user numbers and business scale continue to expand, system load increases continuously, potentially causing performance bottlenecks when handling high-concurrency access and large amounts of data processing. During business peak periods, it's difficult to guarantee system stability. Once the Singapore node fails, users throughout Southeast Asia cannot access the game normally, causing business interruption and player loss.
3. Cost Optimization Requirements: As an SMB, MiLiMiLi is extremely sensitive to cost control. With user growth, if traditional hardware upgrade methods are adopted, significant upfront investment in hardware equipment is required, and ongoing maintenance costs remain high. This high-cost operational model not only occupies substantial funds but also prevents the company from concentrating resources on core game development, urgently requiring cost optimization through new solutions.
4. Escalating Security Threats: The early system did not deploy professional security protection measures. As the company's visibility in the Southeast Asian market increased, the gaming platform faces increasing network attack risks, such as DDoS attacks and data breaches. Once attacked, it not only causes service interruption and affects player gaming experience, but may also cause player data leakage, bringing serious economic losses and reputation damage to the company.

Partner Solution

Adhering to customer-centric principles, Lianyunyi has customized a comprehensive and efficient solution for the challenges faced by MiLiMiLi's gaming platform, based on AWS's powerful cloud service capabilities:

1. Cross-Regional High Availability Architecture: Utilizing AWS global infrastructure to build a cross-regional high availability architecture. Deploy main gaming servers in Singapore region and set up backup nodes in Malaysia, forming a cross-regional disaster recovery mechanism. Through ELB (Elastic Load Balancer) intelligent traffic distribution, ensure load balancing across server instances and prevent single points of failure. Combined with CloudFront CDN acceleration technology, effectively solve access latency issues for Southeast Asian users, reduce cross-border operational costs, and provide stable and reliable infrastructure support for business expansion.
2. Auto Scaling Mechanism: Leveraging AWS Auto Scaling mechanism to dynamically adjust EC2 instance numbers based on business needs. When CPU usage exceeds 70% during business peak periods, the system automatically adds EC2 instances to handle sudden traffic increases; during low periods when CPU usage falls below 30%, it automatically reduces EC2 instance numbers to release excess resources. This auto-scaling mechanism not only improves system elasticity and responsiveness but also optimizes resource utilization based on actual business load, reduces operational costs, and meets performance requirements brought by user growth.
3. Cost Optimization Strategy: With AWS cloud services, MiLiMiLi eliminates the need for self-built data centers, removing high upfront capital expenditure and long-term equipment maintenance costs, including hardware procurement, data center construction, and power consumption costs, allowing more resources to focus on core game development. Adopting AWS Reserved Instances (RI) model, enjoying lower usage fees through advance resource reservation. Meanwhile, using Cost Explorer to monitor resource consumption in real-time, analyze cost structure, optimize resource usage methods, further reduce cloud resource costs, and achieve a 40% reduction in comprehensive operational costs.
4. Multi-Layer Security Protection: Deploy Shield and WAF for DDoS protection and malicious request filtering, providing basic network security protection for the gaming platform. Combined with KMS (Key Management Service) for data encryption, ensuring data security during static storage and transmission; using CloudTrail for operation auditing, recording all operations on AWS resources for easy tracking and troubleshooting of security issues; identifying abnormal traffic and potential security threats through GuardDuty, taking timely response measures. These security services work together to build an enterprise-level security system with multi-layer security protection, effectively resisting over 90% of network attacks, ensuring system availability of 99.9%, and protecting player data and transaction information security.

System Architecture Diagram

Customer Benefits

1. Significantly Reduced Access Latency: Through cross-regional high availability architecture and CloudFront CDN acceleration, average access latency for Southeast Asian users decreased by approximately 70%. Singapore user access latency dropped significantly from previously high levels, and Malaysian user access latency also improved markedly. The tremendous improvement in user experience directly resulted in a 45% increase in customer satisfaction and a 25% improvement in retention rates, effectively enhancing user stickiness and promoting business growth.
2. Enhanced Performance and Business Availability: Auto Scaling mechanism reduced system response time by 55% during business peak periods, enabling rapid processing of large numbers of concurrent requests and ensuring smooth game operation. ELB and multi-availability zone deployment combined with Malaysian backup nodes significantly improved system availability, with 99.9% of game operations completing successfully and game interruption rates reduced by 85%, providing players with a stable and reliable gaming environment and ensuring business continuity and stability.
3. Cost Optimization: Adopting Reserved Instance model and cost optimization tools like Cost Explorer, resource costs reduced by 35%. Meanwhile, leveraging AWS cloud services to eliminate self-built data center costs, comprehensive operational costs decreased by 40%. The significant cost reduction enables the company to invest more funds and resources in core game development and business expansion, enhancing the company's competitiveness.
4. Enhanced Security: The deployment of AWS Shield, WAF, and GuardDuty security services significantly enhanced the platform's security protection capabilities. System availability reached 99.9%, successfully resisting over 90% of network attacks, effectively protecting player data and transaction information security, improving player trust in the gaming platform, and laying a solid foundation for the company's long-term development in the Southeast Asian market.