Why game servers need different protection
Generic DDoS filters protect web traffic — they expect TCP, HTTPS, REST. Game servers use UDP-heavy protocols (RakNet for Minecraft Bedrock, custom protocols for FiveM, native UDP for Source engine games). Generic filters either drop legitimate game traffic or fail to identify game-specific attack patterns.
Our game-server protection is protocol-aware: it recognizes Minecraft handshake, Source query, RakNet, and FiveM-specific traffic and only mitigates anomalies within those protocols.
What is protected
- L3/L4 floods — same scrubbing as the rest of our network, 1.5+ Tbps capacity.
- Spoofed-UDP floods — common attack vector for game servers, blocked at edge.
- Protocol-specific exploits — Minecraft handshake DoS, Source server-query amplification, RakNet ping floods.
- Rate-limited query floods — server-list and query attacks throttled per-source-IP.
During an attack
Most attacks are absorbed without latency hit. Players notice nothing. For larger attacks, latency may rise briefly (5–15 seconds) while the mitigation kicks in.
If your players are reporting timeouts, drop a message in the panel's incident channel or open a Sev-1 ticket. Our gaming-ops team responds in under 15 minutes.
What does not get blocked
- High-traffic Discord-coordinated raids — these are real users, not bots. We do not block legitimate join attempts; you handle this in-game (whitelist, anti-cheat, login throttle).
- VPN traffic — many of your players legitimately use VPNs. We do not block them.
Per-game tuning
Tell us which games you run. We tune mitigation per-protocol:
- Minecraft Java — TCP 25565, handshake-aware.
- Minecraft Bedrock — UDP 19132, RakNet-aware.
- FiveM — UDP 30120, custom protocol-aware.
- Source engine (CS2, Garry's Mod) — UDP 27015, Source-query-aware.
- Rust — UDP 28015, RakNet-aware.
Open a ticket if you run something else and we will add it.