No Technical Background, No Problem: Here is a Game Host for Every Kind of Gamer

TL; DR: Shockbyte offers game server hosting to help players build community and customize their gaming experience to their liking. The highlight of its platform is its usability. Its streamlined user experience and 24/7/365 support allow gamers to jump right into gaming and find all the solutions to their problems. Shockbyte also helps game studios jump-start their launches with server assistance and provision. We spoke with James Zinn, Head of Partnerships at Shockbyte, about the platform, its new control panel, and other initiatives.

If you’re any type of avid gamer, you’ve probably heard of player-owned servers. The game hosting market has reached new heights in recent years, as players look for more agency and build community for their gaming experience.

For a long time, Minecraft was flying solo in the player-owned server category. Its popularity and accessible framework allowed users to create modifications and run multiplayer experiences on their own terms. But many other gamers have joined the fleet since.

Today, gamers can rent servers for various video games, including Valheim, Stardew Valley, Palworld, and ARK. And the list continues to grow. Shockbyte is a game hosting provider that has been in the game hosting business since its early days.

Launched in 2013, Shockbyte offers server plans for gamers of all backgrounds. It allows users to run their hosting environment to their needs, whether they’re into more technical customizations or need a straightforward experience.

“Around 70% of people who start servers have never done it before. So we take that whole process out, handle that all upfront for them, and narrow tasks down to a single click,” James Zinn, Head of Partnerships at Shockbyte.

The Shockbyte team is a pioneer in the game hosting industry, providing services since 2013. At the time, Minecraft was the industry’s singular, main product. James told us Valheim was the turning point for the market.

“Valheim made maybe two to three million within its first couple weeks of sales. And its studio team, Iron Gate, was a massive turning point in giving server control over to players,” said James.

Valheim’s studio team providing server control to players made a shift in the gaming industry. From then on, Shockbyte and other hosts began to see a massive uptick in server demand for multiplayer gaming.

“This server format gives no overhead to the studio. It’s completely self-driven by the community. These are self-advertised servers,” James said.

James also told us that player-owned servers helped increase Valheim’s longevity. Although the game is still in early access, it remains at the top of Steam’s charts for player count. Other video games, including Enshrouded, Nightingale, and Palworld, saw the same or even larger success.

Shockbyte distinguishes itself from its competitors by providing simple-to-use hosting designed by gamers for gamers.

“Shockbyte is run by a group of young gamers. The average age here is quite young, and we are in this space because we’ve all played it. We all are still playing and know what a streamlined experience looks like,” said James.

Setting up a hosting environment can be daunting. That’s why the Shockbyte team wanted to eliminate any hassle and make game hosting accessible to every kind of user. This way, gamers can focus on what they love — gaming.

“We have 24/7/365 support where anyone can reach out and we’ll be back nearly immediately to change or even completely help them with their server setup, whether that be modded plugins or whatever they’re looking to make,” said James.

Shockbyte takes a hands-on approach to hosting and customer relationships. Customers can come to Shockbyte with any issues. If users have trouble customizing their multiplayer experience, they can seek assistance from the Shockbyte customer support team.

Whether for families or content creators, Shockbyte has the solutions and support to develop a tailored experience for any user.

Shockbyte continues to improve its hosting environment to cater to the gaming experience better. James told us Shockbyte has a strong, internal development team and currently has a new feature in open beta, which has already garnered tons of feedback.

“We’ve recently launched our brand new Shockbyte control panel. The industry is currently using a standard that is quite dated. So we decided to take it upon ourselves to create something entirely new. We specifically would like to make something tailored to ourselves and our customers that we think is more streamlined,” said James.

The new control panel will have a modern, sleek design that matches the appearance of other gaming tech and applications. The user experience will be smoother, eliminating lagging and providing more structured navigation.

“There’s brand new reporting regarding how your server is reporting. You’ll see how your server consumes your RAM, CPU, and other resources. So you can keep track of where you’re falling behind and address that,” said James.

Its all-in-one overview dashboard will give users the visibility to manage their resources responsibly. Shockbyte also added another highlight to the control panel. The industry standard is for gamers to use third-party connectors to access servers and add files, but Shockbyte does it differently.

“We are now completely drag and drop. The control panel acts just like a file manager that would be on your PC and feels very native and local, which is just an unforgettable experience. It just makes it lovely for a gamer,” said James.

Palworld made a sweeping entrance into the gaming world in January 2024. It sold more than 8 million copies in less than six days, according to its developer Pocketpair. As it happens, Shockbyte also played a significant role in Palworld’s mega launch.

During the peak of Palworld’s launch success, Shockbyte was fulfilling a brand new server request from players every four seconds. This is simply not a scalability that game development studios can accommodate or prepare for. Palworld was only able to provide dedicated hosting options to players by choosing player-owned hosting.

“We are trying to educationally push different online resources as a real way to launch servers using dedicated server hosting rather than going with official server hosting with upfront costs in the studio or going with P2P approaches with unreliable connections,” said James.

James said even if a game studio doesn’t partner with Shockbyte, he encourages studios to consider player-owned servers over other costly or unreliable options. Shockbyte seeks to raise awareness around this issue, so game studios can find more success in their endeavors.

“Palworld launched and was successful because they didn’t host their own servers. So we’re trying to push that zero overhead approach with our educational initiatives,” said James.