Yggdrasil Gaming Scales Global iGaming Platform with AWS

Intro

Yggdrasil Gaming is a leading B2B provider of premium online casino content, serving operators across regulated markets worldwide. With their innovative game portfolio and advanced gaming technology, Yggdrasil needed infrastructure that could handle massive concurrent player loads, real-time game state management, and strict regulatory compliance requirements. They partnered with GOStack to build a next-generation gaming platform on AWS.

The Challenge

Player Experience: Legacy systems couldn't deliver the sub-50ms latency required for seamless gameplay

Peak Load Management: Traffic spikes during jackpot events and new game launches caused performance degradation

Multi-Jurisdiction Compliance: Complex regulatory requirements across different gaming markets

Game State Integrity: Need for 100% data consistency and audit trails for gaming transactions

Operator Integration: Slow API response times affecting B2B partner satisfaction

Geographic Expansion: Limited ability to serve players in new markets with optimal performance

Security at Scale: A rapidly growing AWS footprint of close to 100 accounts had outpaced centralised security oversight, creating gaps in threat visibility and configuration consistency across business units, environments and jurisdictions

In the iGaming industry, even milliseconds of downtime translate to lost revenue and player churn. With over 100,000 concurrent players during peak events, the platform is also a high-value target for credential stuffing, bonus fraud and API abuse. Yggdrasil needed infrastructure that could scale instantly while maintaining the reliability, security and regulatory standards demanded by gaming regulators across every market it serves.

Our Solution

Real-Time Game Engine: Amazon EKS orchestrated containerised game services with auto-scaling based on concurrent player metrics. The infrastructure employs a hybrid approach combining AWS Graviton processors (ARM-based architecture) for compute-intensive game logic and x86 instances for legacy components, delivering up to 40% better price-performance for migrated gaming workloads. Multi-AZ deployment ensured zero-downtime game sessions even during infrastructure maintenance.

Gaming Database Architecture: Amazon RDS with multi-AZ deployment provided high-availability database services with automated failover capabilities. The database infrastructure combines Graviton2-powered instances for compatible workloads with traditional instances for legacy requirements, optimising both cost and performance. Automated backups and point-in-time recovery met strict audit requirements.

Global Player Experience: Amazon CloudFront delivered game assets and API responses with <50ms latency worldwide, caching static game content at edge locations to reduce origin load and bandwidth costs. Edge locations in key gaming markets across Europe, Asia, and Americas ensured optimal performance for players regardless of location, with intelligent routing minimising latency for real-time gaming sessions.

Security & Compliance: AWS WAF protected against bot attacks, fraud attempts, and common web exploits targeting gaming platforms. Custom WAF rules were configured for iGaming-specific threats including bonus abuse detection, rate limiting for authentication endpoints, and geographic restrictions for regulatory compliance. Built-in DDoS protection safeguarded against attacks during high-value tournaments and jackpot events.

Serverless Game Logic: AWS Lambda handled event-driven processes like bonus calculations, tournament leaderboards, and real-time notifications. Serverless architecture eliminated cold start issues for critical gaming functions while automatically scaling during peak events.

Operator API Performance: Optimised Amazon API Gateway architecture with Lambda-powered microservices delivered sub-100ms response times for operator integrations, improving B2B partner satisfaction and enabling faster game launches.

Organisation-Wide Security & Governance: Amazon GuardDuty was configured with delegated administration and organisation-wide auto-enrolment, extending threat detection across close to 100 AWS accounts and routing high-severity findings directly to the operations team. AWS IAM Access Analyzer was configured at the organisation level to flag unintended external access, a key control given Yggdrasil's operator integrations and third-party studio partnerships.

AWS Config and Security Hub consolidated configuration compliance into a single view against benchmarks including CIS AWS Foundations and PCI-DSS. The entire framework was codified in Terraform, ensuring new accounts automatically inherit the same security baseline.

Results and Benefits

• Player Experience: Sub-50ms game response times globally

• Cost Optimisation: 30% reduction in infrastructure spend through cloud-native architecture

• Processing Power: 6x increase in concurrent player capacity

• Platform Reliability: 99.5% uptime with zero gaming transaction losses

• Market Expansion: Rapid deployment in new jurisdictions within days

• Operator Satisfaction: 90% faster API response times for B2B partners

• Event Processing: Real-time bonus and tournament calculations with zero infrastructure management

• Hybrid Architecture: Flexible ARM/x86 infrastructure optimized for different gaming workload requirements

• Performance Gains: Up to 40% better price-performance for compute-intensive workloads on Graviton processors

• Global Reach: Low-latency content delivery via CloudFront edge locations in key gaming markets

• Security Posture: Comprehensive protection against gaming-specific threats through AWS WAF

• Organisation-Wide Governance: Security controls (GuardDuty, Config, Security Hub, IAM Access Analyzer) are fully codified in Terraform and rolling out across the AWS Organisation, with every new account inheriting the complete security baseline automatically at creation

The transformation enabled Yggdrasil to handle peak loads of over 100,000 concurrent players while maintaining the performance and reliability standards that gaming operators demand. The platform now automatically scales during major tournaments and jackpot events without manual intervention.

Partnership for Years

GOStack runs our AWS infrastructure and data stack. We've scaled a lot and it all just works. That's what you want from a partner.

James Curwen

CEO

Yggdrasil Gaming