Tashi — Making P2P Multiplayer the New Dedicated Game Server
Tags: gamedev, unity3d, web3, programming
Published: 2023-02-24 02:14:35


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People love playing games. From Japan to the States, the gaming industry has been experiencing a rapid growth. It’s also one of the few industries that benefited massively from the global COVID pandemic. For example, Tencent’s online games revenue increased by [more than 65%](https://www.statista.com/statistics/527280/tencent-annual-online-games-revenue/) in just two years while new Animal Crossing sold [more digital units](https://www.oneesports.gg/gaming/animal-crossing-new-horizons-continues-to-break-sales-records/) than any other Switch game.

Advancements in technology also dramatically changed the way we play games. With the rise of online gaming, players now have the ability to play games with others from around the world, in real time. However, this has also created some challenges, some of the biggest being the *lag, cost,* and **fairness** P2P servers often result in terrible ping and allow for cheating galore, while dedicated game servers cost a pretty penny and still penalize players further from the central server (or aid & abett ping hackers through lag compensation). 

## **Enter Tashi**

To create a new multiplayer game, developers need to choose how to host game sessions, via **dedicated servers**(hard for indie developers to fund for years before [some Twitch streamer discovers their game](https://www.reviewgeek.com/58061/what-is-among-us-and-how-did-it-get-so-popular/)) or through **P2P networks**. While the former are more reliable but expensive, the latter are cheap but less stable and do a bad job of preventing cheating (here’s [a brief guide](https://medium.com/tashi-gg/tashi-the-next-generation-of-multiplayer-gaming-cc32729472b3) on the distinction between the two)

Tashi brings together the best of both worlds. It’s flagship offering — a low-latency gaming, serverless multiplayer sessions — provides the cost-effectiveness and scalability of P2P networks, while also offering the performance and security of dedicated servers. Thanks to its proprietary consensus engine, Tashi ensures all players are working with the same accurate and updated game state, while only adding 4-20 ms of consensus time to your ping. 

## **Fairness**

Cheating is a huge problem in gaming. [9 out of 10 players](https://www.forbes.com/sites/nelsongranados/2018/04/30/report-cheating-is-becoming-a-big-problem-in-online-gaming/?sh=2eba42187663) report their experience being negatively impacted by cheating, while some gaming companies were estimated to [lose billions of dollars](https://www.activefence.com/blog/tackling-video-game-cheating/) due to cheating.

Tashi is fair in the sense of preventing cheating. All local state edits are easily detected and discarded by our consensus engine.

Tashi is also fair in the sense of event ordering. Who shot first is determined by when a game event reaches the majority of players, not based on who’s closes to the server. This means there is no need for artificial lag compensation either, which [ping hackers](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/px7smt/how_do_people_ping_hack/) frequently exploit.

The magic of the Tashi Concensus Engine (TCE), allows Tashi to provide the security of a dedicated game server, the cost and infrastructure simplicity of a P2P server, and fairness neither offers.

## **Who Is It For?**

Tashi is not limited to the biggest and most popular games. It also supports indie multiplayer games and web3 gaming, making it the perfect platform for indie game developers to create and launch and scale their games for pennies on the dollar. This level of flexibility makes Tashi a suitable multiplayer backend for any game, regardless of its size or popularity.

## **Is It Pricey?**

In terms of cost, you can think of Tashi multiplayer as the most affordable game server on the market. By eliminating the need for dedicated servers, Tashi significantly reduces the cost of running a multiplayer session (down to 0 if you don’t care about monitoring — the only thing we will be charging for at a fraction of the cost). This, in turn, results in lower costs for players, making it possible for them to enjoy the ultimate gaming experience without breaking the bank.

## **Integrations**

Tashi is also integrated with the modern game development tech stack. Our first offering is Unity plugin you wont even notice you’re using. You can already apply to participate in our close beta at [tashi.gg](http://tashi.gg). Unreal integration is coming soon!