I’m wondering if I have to purchase servers to allow online deathmatch for my game that got recently greenlit on Steam. Or is it handled on the Steam servers? Anyone knows this?
I think you can go with P2P, like Aliens Vs Predator or rent servers. I doubt Steam provides that for free.
Most companies which have needs for online multiplayer rent their servers. You’ll find this from small companies all the way up to the large ones like Riot Games. Generally this comes out of a desire to not have to worry about both maintaining the hardware as well as owning enough property space to place the infrastructure.
Of course, if you’re still a tiny company and don’t want to shell out that sort of money you could go the old 90s route that is still used by a few games and have Hosts where one individual handles all of the connections locally. This is highly prone to various forms of altering the match with “hacks” but stuff like Counter-Strike does it and that is still super popular so really it depends on what the audience wants to accept.
Hmmm Ok so I think renting is the best solution if I want multiplayer option. Thanks for the answers.