Are you asking on how to code it, or on “what hardware should I get”?
Chances are if the whole thing is invite only you can run the server out of your house just fine.
Latest intel 12 or a 5090 with maxed out ram (maybe doesn’t even need that much, depends).
And a beefy 3090 to allow for fast computations should be able to run anything.
Latency can be a problem, obviously.
It depends mostly on your router and local connectivity.
In 2021 some folks have access to fiber, making the difference between running from home and a proper data center almost zilch.
By default, a data center doesn’t give you jack. No redundancy and no real uptime guarantees above 90%.
Out of that,
Azure and a scalable model will cost you tons more than it should.
AWS is trash. Avoid at all costs.
And a few game dedicated datacenters will offer you the earth - and give you zilch after an astronomical bill. So be very careful.
Running your own hardware at a rented rack space is possible and perhaps the best option, but you need to buy server stuff, build it, and ship it.
I did exactly that until the datacenter closed. To me, a place I cannot drive to when there is an issue is an issue in itself…
Currently, my (work, not gaming) servers are all self managed and remote with decent SLA and usually 100% uptime (though not guaranteed, they rarely go down if ever).
On the coding side, it’s much too complex a question I’m afraid. But the bottom line of it is, you code and publish the cli yourself, so you can do whatever you want in theory.
In practice, you’ll be using whatever unreal gives you to start so you’ll have to heavily modify it to fit the needs…