Migrating a Stockholm Gaming Studio from GCP to Azure for Lower European Latency

Client Profile

A Stockholm-based indie gaming studio developing and operating a multiplayer online game with a player base concentrated in Northern and Central Europe. The team of 100 spans game development, backend engineering, and live operations.

Industry Gaming
Location Stockholm, Sweden
Company Size ~100 employees
Duration 4 months

Technologies Used

Azure Terraform Kubernetes Helm

Business Challenge

The client’s game backend ran on GCP, but players in Germany, Poland, and the Nordics experienced inconsistent latency due to limited GCP region availability in Central Europe at the time. Azure offered better regional coverage with data centres in Frankfurt, Stockholm, and Warsaw. The challenge was migrating the entire backend — game servers, matchmaking, player databases, and analytics — without disrupting the live player experience.

Solution

We executed the migration over four months using a phased approach. Infrastructure was provisioned on Azure with Terraform, and game services were containerised and deployed on AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) with Helm. Player databases were migrated using continuous replication with a final cutover during a scheduled maintenance window. DNS-based traffic management allowed gradual shifting of player traffic from GCP to Azure regions, with real-time latency monitoring at every stage.

Outcome

Average player latency in Central Europe dropped by 30%. The studio gained access to Azure’s Frankfurt, Stockholm, and Warsaw regions, providing better coverage for their core player base. The migration was completed with a single 15-minute maintenance window for the final database cutover, with no player-reported issues.

Process

1

Latency Analysis

Measured player latency across all European regions on both GCP and Azure, confirming that Azure's regional coverage would deliver meaningful improvements for the core player base.

2

Azure Infrastructure Provisioning

Provisioned AKS clusters, networking, and storage across Frankfurt, Stockholm, and Warsaw regions using Terraform, matching the GCP architecture's capacity and redundancy.

3

Service Migration

Migrated game services one at a time — starting with matchmaking and analytics, then moving to game servers. Each service was validated under real traffic before proceeding.

4

Database Migration

Set up continuous database replication from GCP to Azure. After three weeks of verified synchronisation, executed the final cutover during a scheduled 15-minute maintenance window.

5

Traffic Shifting

Used DNS-based traffic management to gradually shift player connections from GCP to Azure, monitoring latency and error rates in real time throughout the transition.

6

GCP Decommission

After two weeks of stable operation on Azure, decommissioned all GCP resources and updated documentation and runbooks for the operations team.

Conclusion

Changing cloud providers is a significant undertaking, but when the performance benefits are clear, a well-planned migration can deliver measurable improvements with minimal disruption to end users.

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