Kubernetes for Game Development : Evaluation of the Container-Orchestration Software

Abstract: Kubernetes is a software for managing clusters of containerized applications and has recently risen in popularity in the tech industry. However, this popularity seems to not have spread to the game development industry, prompting the author to investigate if the reason is a technical limitation. The investigation is done by creating a proof-of-concept of a simple system setup for running a game server in Kubernetes, consisting of the Kubernetes-cluster itself, the game server to be run in the cluster, and a matchmaker server for managing client requests and creation of game server instances. Thanks to the successful proof-of-concept, a conclusion can be made that there is no inherent technical limitation causing its infrequent use in game development, but most likely habitual reasons in combination with how new Kubernetes is.