DDoS Protection for Game Servers

What is a DDoS Attack?

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack floods your server with so much traffic that legitimate players can no longer connect.

Common Attack Types

Type Description Target
UDP Flood Massive UDP packets Game server ports
SYN Flood Half-open TCP connections Web panels
Amplification DNS/NTP amplification Bandwidth
Application Layer Login spam, query flood Application

Why Are Game Servers Targeted?

  • Competition: Other server operators
  • Frustrated players: After a ban or wipe
  • Extortion: "Pay up or we'll keep DDoSing"
  • Boredom: Script kiddies testing tools

Protection Measures

What Your Host Should Do

  • Network-level filtering: Traffic is filtered before reaching the server
  • Anycast: Traffic is distributed across multiple locations
  • Rate limiting: Too many requests from one IP = block
  • Blackholing: During extreme attacks, the IP is temporarily null-routed

What You Can Do

  1. Don't make your server IP public: Use a domain or proxy
  2. Disable query if not needed
  3. Firewall rules: Only open necessary ports
  4. VPN for admin access: SSH not on the default port

DDoS Protection at game-serverhosting.de

  • Included with all servers
  • Hetzner DDoS Protection: Enterprise-level protection
  • Cloudflare: For web traffic
  • Automatic detection: Attacks are detected and filtered immediately
  • No extra cost: DDoS protection is always included