GameStake Technologies

The Client

GameStake Technologies, founded in December 2019 and headquartered in London, specializes in developing innovative Backend-as-a-Service and Rewards-as-a-Service tools that empower gaming studios to enhance player experiences. The company also publishes engaging rewarded gaming apps and has established partnerships with major companies such as Amazon, Uber, and Microsoft.

They recently closed it's Seed funding round, the company aims to expand its product offering beyond a B2C mobile app to include a B2B customer engagement platform, GameStake For Business. This expansion requires a major technology transformation to support anticipated growth while being managed by a small three-person engineering team.

GameStake Technologies

GameStake Technologies builds backend and rewards tools for gaming, partnering with companies like Amazon, Uber, and Microsoft.

Ivan Ivanov

Head of Engineering

Industry

Advertising, Digital Marketing

Location

London, UK

Founded

2019

The Challenge

GameStake Technologies needed to overhaul its technology stack to ensure scalability, reliability, and maintainability. The company sought to grow from 50,000 users to potentially millions while keeping its engineering team small. Their previous setup relied on AWS EC2 virtual machines managed via the AWS console, presenting several challenges:

• Manual and error-prone software updates
  Updates required at least an hour of time from Ivan Ivanov, the Head of Engineering.

• Limited scalability and data integrity risks
  Data stores were running locally via containers without proper replication.

• Lack of reproducibility and auditability
  Infrastructure management was done manually through the AWS console.

To address these issues, GameStake set specific objectives:

• Adopt Kubernetes for zero-downtime software updates, load balancing, and autoscaling.

• Implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to ensure reproducibility and auditability.

• Migrate data stores to managed services for better reliability and scalability.

• Achieve these improvements without increasing their budget for additional DevOps expertise.

The Solution

GameStake Technologies partnered with Massdriver to modernize their infrastructure. After successfully testing a proof of concept in their staging environment, they proceeded with a full-scale migration of their production workloads. Massdriver provided a comprehensive solution that addressed their key challenges:

• Migration to Kubernetes
  GameStake transitioned from running containers on VMs with Docker Compose to a fully managed EKS Kubernetes cluster.

• Automated Deployments
  Software releases became fully automated via GitHub Actions, enabling zero-downtime deployments and freeing up engineering time.

• Improved Data Integrity
  The adoption of AWS-managed databases, including Redis and Postgres, significantly enhanced data reliability and scalability.

• Expanded Technology Stack
  With Massdriver’s support, GameStake was able to incorporate new tools like Unleash for feature flagging and A/B testing, as well as MongoDB Atlas, which were previously too complex to deploy and manage.

• Infrastructure as Code Implementation
  GameStake adopted IaC for all infrastructure and applications, ensuring environment reproducibility, auditability, and parity between staging and production.

• Enhanced Testing and Validation
  Enforcing parity between staging and production environments reduced risks and improved the reliability of testing before deployment.

The Result

The transformation of GameStake Technologies' technology stack was profound:

• The adoption of Kubernetes allowed for efficient scaling and operational stability.

• Automated deployments saved significant engineering time and eliminated manual errors.

• Managed database services improved data integrity and system reliability.

• New tools for feature management and database flexibility positioned the company for greater innovation.

• Infrastructure as Code ensured consistency and streamlined operations, reducing overhead.

Conclusion

By leveraging Massdriver, GameStake Technologies successfully modernized its infrastructure, paving the way for massive scalability and expansion. With a future-proof technology stack in place, the company is now well-equipped to grow beyond a single mobile app and establish a robust B2B engagement platform. This transformation has enabled GameStake to confidently scale its services while maintaining a lean and efficient engineering team.