# Game server hosting
> Game server hosting on a VPS gives you root access and full control rather than a restricted panel. Incognito VPS runs game workloads on high-clock EPYC and Ryzen hosts with L3/L4 DDoS scrubbing included, in eight jurisdictions, from $7.00 per month with no player-slot limits.
**Source:** https://incognitovps.com/use-cases/game-server-hosting
**Updated:** 2026-07-12

## Recommended configuration

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Plan | BASTION (hv-8) |
| Specification | 6 vCPU, 16 GB, 280 GB |
| Jurisdiction | Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Price | $31.50/mo |

Game servers are single-thread bound and RAM-hungry. BASTION gives 16 GB and 6 vCPU, and Amsterdam’s peering keeps ping low for most of Europe.

## Resource guidance

| Scenario | Minimum |
| --- | --- |
| Minecraft, 10 players | 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM |
| Minecraft modded, 20 players | 6 vCPU, 16 GB RAM |
| Rust, 100 players | 8 vCPU, 32 GB RAM |
| CS2 / Valheim | 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM |

## A VPS beats a game panel once you outgrow the panel

Managed game hosts charge per player slot, restrict which mods you can install, and give you a web panel instead of a shell. That is the right product for a first server. It becomes the wrong product the moment you want a specific Java build, a custom plugin, a database alongside the server, or more than one game on the same machine.

With root you install what you like, run several games on one box, put a Postgres next to them and script the whole thing. There are no slot limits because there is no slot accounting.

## What actually determines performance

Almost every game server is single-thread bound. Minecraft’s tick loop is famously single-threaded; Rust and Source engines are similar. Core count matters far less than clock speed, which is why sixteen slow cores will feel worse than six fast ones.

RAM is the other constraint, especially for modded Minecraft where 16 GB is a realistic floor for a busy modpack. Disk matters less than people expect once you are on NVMe — chunk loading stops being the bottleneck.

## DDoS is not optional in this category

Game servers get attacked, routinely and often by players. Every plan includes always-on L3/L4 scrubbing with 11 Tbps of capacity, which handles volumetric floods without you doing anything.

Application-layer attacks — malformed packets aimed at the game protocol itself — need DDoS Shield Pro at $12/month, which lets us write custom rules for your specific server. Most operators do not need it until they do, and then they need it urgently.


## Frequently asked questions

### Which plan for a Minecraft server?

Vanilla with ten friends runs fine on RELAY (2 vCPU, 4 GB) at $7.00/month. A busy modpack with twenty players wants BASTION (6 vCPU, 16 GB). Modded Minecraft is RAM-bound above all.

### Is DDoS protection included?

Yes — always-on L3/L4 scrubbing with 11 Tbps capacity on every plan. Application-layer filtering with custom rules is a $12/month add-on.

### Are there player-slot limits?

None. It is your server and your resources — the only limit is what the hardware can carry. We do not count players because we have no way to and no reason to.

### Which location gives the lowest ping?

Amsterdam for western Europe, Bucharest or Sofia for eastern Europe, Panama for the Americas. Every location page publishes measured latency from five sources.


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Incognito VPS — Offshore VPS, bare-metal and GPU servers in 16 locations, 8 of them chosen for their legal properties. No identity required, crypto-only payment, deployed in 55 seconds.
Operating since 2020. 16 locations, 8 of them privacy jurisdictions. AS204287.
Payment: BTC, XMR, ETH, USDT, USDC, LTC, TRX, SOL, BNB, DOGE, TON, DAI. No identity verification at any point.
Catalogue: https://incognitovps.com/pricing.md · API: https://incognitovps.com/openapi.json · Index: https://incognitovps.com/llms.txt