Nitrado & GameFabric at EVE Fanfest 2025: The Cutting Edge of Session Gaming

Reykjavík, Iceland - May 1-3, 2025

EVE Fanfest 2025 has served as a vibrant nexus for the passionate EVE Online community of Capsuleers and its creators, CCP Games. Nitrado had the privilege of being brought into the orbit of this epic event, and we were honored to meaningfully participate not just as a sponsor of EVE Fanfest, but also join as a technical collaborator. This engagement culminated in a shared presentation with CCP Games, offering insight into the advanced server orchestration that will aid their expansion into cutting-edge session-based gaming.

Nitrado’s sponsorship of this year’s event stemmed first and foremost from a profound respect for CCP Games’ pioneering work in multiplayer experiences and the dedicated global community they have cultivated over many years of spacefaring adventure. Our presence at EVE Fanfest provided an invaluable opportunity to connect with developers, players, creators, and industry leaders, all launching towards the forefront of online gaming.

Nitrado & GameFabric at EVE Fanfest 2025

A highlight of our participation was the cooperative talk titled “Bringing CCP Games To The Cutting Edge of Session Gaming - Powered by Nitrado.” This session featured server architecture insights from CCP’s Senior Backend Engineer, Kurtis Lamb, alongside Nitrado’s Head of B2B, Andreas Pohl. The presentation delved into CCP Games’ strategic journey towards the frontier of sophisticated session-based gameplay, with a particular focus on their upcoming MMOFPS, EVE Vanguard.

A core component of this discussion revolved around how Nitrado’s GameFabric platform is well suited for providing the critical multiplayer server orchestration that will be useful in contributing towards EVE Vanguard’s server backend. The ability to dynamically spin up game servers across bare metal and cloud in seconds, scale instantly and burst into a variety of cloud providers, take advantage of optimized networking, and prevent DDoS attacks through SteelShield™’s unique and sophisticated protection, makes GameFabric’s architecture a perfect match for delivering the intense, instance-based first-person shooter experiences required for this giant leap in the greater EVE universe.

Watch: EVE Fanfest 2025 - Bringing CCP Games To The Cutting Edge of Session Gaming - Powered by Nitrado

The talk provided a closer look at the technical underpinnings crucial for EVE Vanguard’s fast-paced action. A key challenge the presentation addressed was latency; with Vanguard’s high tick rate (updating “60 times per second”), a centralized server model, while functional for EVE Online, became unviable. The solution necessitates servers located geographically closer to players to mitigate what Kurtis Lamb has coined the “breakfast, lunch, and dinner problem” of fluctuating regional player activity, a strategy GameFabric’s distributed architecture facilitates.

Andreas Pohl elaborated on Nitrado’s hybrid infrastructure approach for this dynamic scaling:

 “We utilize our own infrastructure that we operate [...], but we are working with cloud providers as well to scale into them whenever needed. And that’s the beauty of the system because you’re not limited to your bare metal capacity anymore and [you] can scale dynamically”.

This ensures server capacity aligns with player distribution. Furthermore, Nitrado’s ownership of its Autonomous System Number (ASN) is leveraged for better traffic management, and is designed to “optimize latency and improve network performance”. This network optimization is particularly impactful by making it easier for “players who sit in different continents to play together and have a good experience” by providing a more stable and responsive connection.

Beyond geographical distribution and network enhancements, speed of orchestration and resource efficiency are paramount for a dynamic title like EVE Vanguard. Kurtis highlighted the transformative improvement in server deployment times achieved through GameFabric:

 “In one of our play tests, it took exactly 15 seconds for new servers to come online [...] originally this was 5 minutes”.

This rapid provisioning capability is essential for the fluid management of session-based gameplay. He further detailed Vanguard’s innovative resource model where each game session reserves a minimum of one CPU and two gigs of RAM and can then ”borrow from a shared pool”. This represents a significant shift from fixed server sizes to a more granular, highly efficient utilization of compute resources.

On the critical security front, the direct integration of GameFabric’s SteelShield™ offers real-time DDoS protection. Its unique methodology, which employs a proof-of-identity system, ensures “zero false positives”, decisively safeguarding the integrity of demanding online sessions against disruptive attacks.

The Sky's the Limit

Our collaboration with CCP Games on EVE Vanguard exemplifies GameFabric’s core mission: to empower game developers with a high-performing, flexible, and developer-first multiplayer server orchestration platform. By offloading the complexities of game server infrastructure management, GameFabric serves to support studios like CCP in delivering the out-of-this-world experiences players old and new have come to love.

Nitrado and the GameFabric team extend their gratitude to CCP Games for hosting such a stellar event and for the opportunity to share the stage with them as they gave a peek into the very dark matter behind EVE Vanguard. We can’t wait to learn more about the future of EVE and we look forward to our continued collaboration with CCP Games - the fabric of space will never be the same.

About EVE Vanguard®

EVE Vanguard is an upcoming sandbox MMOFPS for PC, where players directly impact the biggest war in gaming. As an immortal warclone, descend onto the surface of hostile worlds to complete hazardous contracts, equipping adaptive weaponry to counter emergent threats. Set your own goals and play your way in a persistent, ever-evolving universe — joining thousands of others in a fight to dominate the vast star cluster of New Eden. Currently in early development, players can access EVE Vanguard and deploy to the battleground directly from the EVE launcher on PC.

Website | Press Kit | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Twitch | Discord

About GameFabric

GameFabric provides game studios the ability to dynamically spin up session-based and persistent game servers on demand across bare metal and cloud environments. GameFabric’s orchestration capabilities allow for efficient provisioning and management of game server instances, lifting the burden of complex server operations. Reach out for a personalized demo.

Website | Press Kit | LinkedIn