Gaming Studio AWS Cost Optimization
45% Monthly Cost Reduction
Zero Performance Impact
ABOUT THE CLIENT
An indie gaming studio running multiplayer game servers on AWS facing unsustainable cloud costs. Their monthly AWS bill had grown significantly as their player base expanded, threatening the studio’s profitability.
THE CHALLENGE
- Monthly AWS bill exceeded $50,000 with no visibility into cost drivers or optimization opportunities
- Development instances running 24/7 including weekends when no one was working
- Oversized EC2 instances provisioned based on guesswork rather than actual utilization data
- Terabytes of old game assets stored in S3 Standard tier despite being rarely accessed
- No Reserved Instance coverage meant paying full on-demand prices for predictable workloads
THE SOLUTION
ConsultingCrafts performed comprehensive AWS cost optimization – right-sizing instances, implementing spot instances, and optimizing storage.
Technical Implementation
- Analyzed 3 months of CloudWatch metrics and Cost Explorer data to identify right-sizing opportunities
- Implemented EC2 Spot Instances for game build servers achieving 70% cost reduction on compute
- Configured S3 Intelligent-Tiering for game assets with lifecycle policies moving old data to Glacier
- Set up AWS Instance Scheduler to automatically stop dev/test environments outside business hours
- Purchased 1-year Reserved Instances for production workloads with predictable usage patterns
- Created Cost Explorer dashboards with budget alerts and weekly cost anomaly reports
RESULTS & BUSINESS IMPACT
45%
Monthly Cost Reduction ($22K saved)
45%
Monthly Cost Reduction ($22K saved)
$265K
Annual Savings Achieved
$265K
Annual Savings Achieved
Real-time
Cost Visibility & Alerting
Real-time
Cost Visibility & Alerting
Zero
Performance Impact
Zero
Performance Impact
TECHNOLOGY STACK
AWS | EC2 Spot | S3 Intelligent-Tiering | Cost Explorer | Auto Scaling | Reserved Instances
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