Game servers by the hour - interesting?

[milkmansrevenge]

Hey,

I think people who read RPS will be interested in what I've launched: Nimble Servers - the first company to offer game servers on demand at hourly rates!

Servers start from just £0.06 an hour for Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source and 1.6. We also have Minecraft at three different price points. All the servers are currently in the UK, but we will be adding more locations and games as fast as we can. You get full FTP access and when you shut down servers we save all your changes and restore them automatically the next time you come back.

This clearly isn't meant to be a replacement for large servers that run 24/7, but there is no arguing against the fact that a lot of servers are sitting around empty most of the time! We feel we are the perfect solution for groups of friends, clans and people who want to run servers for a variety of games.

Feedback, game suggestions, criticism and puns welcome. If you make an account on the site post here with your username or email me (chris@nimbleservers.com) and I'll sort you out with some free credit :)

http://nimbleservers.com

Update:

Added support for Left4Dead2! Also added referral system with generous 20% bonus.

[Berzee]

Very interesting!
I don't run servers or play with particular friends m'self, so I would not get much use out of it -- but I recognize a good idea when I see one. =P

[Kelron]

RPS posted about a similar site last year, but it looks like it never went anywhere: http://www.cloudfrag.com/

I'll keep an eye on yours, though. Do you have specific plans for other games in the future or are you waiting to see how it goes first?

[milkmansrevenge]

We very much have plans for other games in the future but not for specific ones at the moment. Any in particular you would like to see?

[afrobanzai]

Very nice idea.

If you ever get some servers running in the states, I may try it out.

[mickygor]

This is a brilliant idea. Makes playing games with friends every now and then nice and easy. I'll look into it, though I don't have many friends who play CS or TF2, but if your game selection broadens it could be very, very useful.

[milkmansrevenge]

afrobanzai: We heard from a few people that the latency is fine for games like Minecraft. We have a server up at the moment if anyone wants to test their connection:

mc.nimbleservers.com

mickygor: Thanks! We'll look at adding some more :)

[Calpin]

Just signed up (Calpin) I'd love to see L4D2 in this. Garry's Mod and Sanctum would also be really good.

[milkmansrevenge]

I'd love to see L4D2 in this.

We just added Left4Dead2 :) Also have a referral system in place so if you can persuade one of your friends to top up you get 40% of that top up!

[fionny]

Nice one, Would be very interested if ye had a BF3 option.

[milkmansrevenge]

Nice one, Would be very interested if ye had a BF3 option.

Unfortunately EA/DICE only tend to allow extra server hosts for their games when they bring out new ones but we will be trying to persuade them to let us!

[Krikey!]

This looks really interesting. Will you guys be extending the servers to Asia in the near future?

[Rauten]

Wow. This is... wow. Awesome. I have no use whatsoever for this right now, but this is going to my bookmarks for possible future use.

[milkmansrevenge]

This looks really interesting. Will you guys be extending the servers to Asia in the near future?

We will most likely expand to additional locations in the EU before Asia :(

Might I ask what part of Asia? Beyond Starcraft in Korea and MMOs elsewhere I know little about gaming in Asia tbh!

Wow. This is... wow. Awesome. I have no use whatsoever for this right now, but this is going to my bookmarks for possible future use.

Thanks Rauten!

[Lukasz]

Don't forget your penal colony in Oceania.

[Quasar]

Looks great, I'm sure I'll be using this sooner or later. Will you be accepting more payment options than PayPal, though? I don't really trust them :/

[Krikey!]

We will most likely expand to additional locations in the EU before Asia :(

Might I ask what part of Asia? Beyond Starcraft in Korea and MMOs elsewhere I know little about gaming in Asia tbh!



Thanks Rauten!

Well yeah Starcraft and F2P MMOs are still dominating in this region, but there is nevertheless a significant group of players not conforming to that stereotype. I say 'significant' in that, while not as vibrant as the former group, is still sizable enough so that there's a noticeable demand for game servers like Killing Floor, Minecraft, Quake 3 (even till today, people are puzzled as to why the Singaporean Quake Live servers were shut down, despite the huge demand for it), the Call of Duty series and ARMA2. I'm not sure about the proportion, but definitely you'll find a range of players nicely spread out from Korea to the Philippines to Singapore.

[milkmansrevenge]

Looks great, I'm sure I'll be using this sooner or later. Will you be accepting more payment options than PayPal, though? I don't really trust them :/

We would like to add more payment options although I can't really say for sure when this will happen. With how we have PayPal set up you don't need an account you can pay directly with a card - but I accept this is not enough for some people who have major problems with PayPal!

What providers do you trust? Same question to anyone else who doesn't like PayPal :)

Krikey!: Thanks for the explanation.

[Quasar]

Amazon Payment seems fairly simple, as it just links to your Amazon account in order to extract money. I don't really know too much about these things, though :P

[Alex Bakke]

Hey!

If you don't mind me asking, how exactly do you work out the pricing for the games? Why is L4D2 10p an hour, and CS 1p an hour.

I'm not criticising anything, just curious. :)