Right now we're a top 25 grossing iPhone game developer. The last AWS bill I saw was January's, a little under $200k.
I'm not on the server team, so I don't know exactly what contributes most to it. But part of me really thinks it could be reduced!
I'm not on the server team, so I don't know exactly what contributes most to it. But part of me really thinks it could be reduced!
Some games require massive amounts of compute, but the bandwidth to deliver the assets is generally paid by Apple.
I can guarantee you, your company is paying a metric fuck-ton more. It is called Apple's 30% cut.
Your company is paying AWS $200k to pass json messages around for analytics and social aspects of the game. You are paying Apple something like $1 million per week to distribute, market, and collect payments for the game.
I am not saying your company is dumb, or Apple is evil. I am saying your experience and anecdote isn't relevant to Ruby Gems, and offering a different way to think about the games industry vs. the open source software distribution world.
Though you mention delivering the assets. Actually (like a lot of games) we make a big effort in getting under 50MB over-the-air limit on the App Store. The total content for retina iPhone is ~300MB, delivered in parts as you progress in the game. That's kept on S3, downloaded through CloudFront.
But yes! You're right, it's mostly a hell of a lot of JSON flying around.
We're managing to squeeze our apps into this at the moment, but will likely need a similar solution using S3/CloudFront in the near future.
[1] http://www.macrumors.com/2013/09/18/apple-increases-over-the...
Haven't looked at it since iOS 7 launch though, do you know if it was iOS 6 too?
If anyone ever ends up doing something like this; ask them upfront!
When I've hit them, I've usually had a response to the "raise my limit" form within an hour or two.