Earlier this month SpotRacers suffered server downtime amounting to somewhere in the region of 48-62 hours which prevented players from logging in to the game. As the team at Level Up Garage scrambled to try and resolve the issue, efforts were compounded by the fact that the problem happened to occur over a Bank Holiday weekend. This ultimately meant that those who could help resolve the issue, were not back in the office until the Tuesday.
This downtime had a negative impact on the reviews across the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Frustratingly there was very little that Level Up Garage could do about this particular issue as the fault lay with the backend service provided by GameSparks.
GameSparks, based in the UK & Ireland was founded in 2013 by Griffin Parry, Gabriel Page and John Griffin is a ‘Backend-as-a-Service’ (BaaS). The service provides game developers with a fully managed server-side set of backend features and capabilities by way of API’s and cloud based coding which can be built in to the game. These include leader boards, notifications, player profiles and multiplayer (real time and turn based) features which can all be managed from the cloud.
SpotRacers is one of many games that utilises GameSparks for it’s backend services. In the case of SpotRacers, the race leader boards, online multiplayer races, friends system and player profiles to name just a few are all powered by GameSparks. The benefits of utilising a backend service provided by another party means that developers can concentrate on developing other aspects of the game. The downside however, is the reliance on another service meaning that when GameSparks goes down, so to does SpotRacers.
In April 2017 Amazon (specifically their cloud enterprise division, AWS) purchased GameSparks for a cool $10m (circa) leaving game developers utilising the backend service in somewhat uncertainty and wondering what this meant for their games. All appeared as though the service would continue following the acquisition. Meanwhile, Amazon began developing it’s games kit services including GameSparks.
Fast forward to July 2021 and GameSparks unexpectedly dropped a bomb shell announcing that they had disabled the creation of new accounts and from March 2022 any new game launches utilising the service would not be supported. Furthermore, developers who were currently using the service were now being advised that they need to transition to another BaaS by September 30th 2022!
This unexpected news meant that Level Up Garage had to look at alternatives and whilst alternatives exist, they come with a price tag making them effectively unaffordable for the small team of 6 behind SpotRacers.
The decision was therefore made that Level Up Garage would create their own in-house backend system. Unfortunately this meant that resources had to be removed from the development of new features (Crews and Head-to-Head for example) and diverted to creating and developing the new backend. This was a difficult decision for the team to make, as they were aware of how the players were looking forward to those multiplayer features, but ultimately an important decision which allows Level Up Garage to be in complete control.
Over the last couple of months SpotRacers has gained significant numbers, helped in part by featuring in Apple’s App Stores in the US and the EU and making it as game of day in the US App Store. SpotRacers was also nominated for several awards at the SpilPrisen 2022 Danish game awards and received the award for “Best Emergent Experience” towards the end of April 2022 (frustratingly only several days prior to the down time occurring).
The spike in players, whilst obviously a good thing for SpotRacers was unfortunately most likely the reason behind the server down time. GameSparks as a service is built to scale up as a game becomes more popular. However, as GameSparks is winding down to the September deadline it would appear they were not prepared, or did not expect any of the smaller developed games utilising the current service to expand so quickly prior to the September shutdown. This is the reason why SpotRacers was down.
Progress on the new backend, I’m told has been moving along at a good pace and it is expected that the transition from GameSparks to the new BaaS will likely occur before September. Whilst the hope is that the transition will go smoothly and effectively undetected by the players, it is worth keeping in mind that this may not be the case so I’m sure the players patience would be fully appreciated should this be the case. In the meantime, Level Up Garage has put in place a failsafe should a sudden spike in players once again occur and cause problems with GameSparks.
Until then and in the meantime, I’m certain that we can expect more model updates and if clues provided in the replies to app store reviews are anything to go by, we can expect new accessories, tracks and SpotRacer models in the future.
