Zynga Geo Proxy: Reducing Mobile Game Latency
Article Summary
Sergey Skachkov and Ajinkya Apte from Zynga cut mobile game latency in half for global players. Their geo proxy solution turned frustrated users into retained ones.
Zynga's engineering team tackled a critical problem: players outside North America experienced painfully high latency connecting to Oregon-based servers. They built a custom geo proxy solution using AWS global infrastructure, deploying lightweight proxy servers across five continents to intercept and route traffic more efficiently.
Key Takeaways
- Global latency dropped 50%+ by routing through regional proxies with persistent connections
- User retention increased 30 basis points across D1-D30 for geo proxy users
- Customer complaints about slow social features decreased significantly after deployment
- HTTPS handshake overhead eliminated by pre-established proxy-to-server connections
Zynga's geo proxy solution delivered measurable business impact with 30 basis point retention gains and 1% session increases while dramatically reducing latency complaints.
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What This Article Covers
Zynga's Oregon servers were causing serious latency issues for users around the world. HTTP handshakes alone took over 400ms, and HTTPS calls were even slower, which broke Apple's App Transport Security requirements.
Skachkov and Apte set up lightweight proxy servers in five AWS regions: Virginia, Frankfurt, São Paulo, Sydney, and Singapore. These proxies maintained persistent connections back to the Oregon servers, so they didn't have to establish new connections repeatedly.
Users outside North America saw real improvements in latency. Complaints about social features dropped noticeably, and sessions per user went up by 1% for people using the geo proxy compared to those who weren't.
This page summarizes “Zynga Geo Proxy: Reducing Mobile Game Latency” by Zynga, published Jul 5, 2017. All credit for the original work goes to the authors.
