Security
DDoS Protection for Game Servers: What Actually Works
Mira Chen 4 April 2026 8 min read
"800 Gbps DDoS protection" sounds impressive on a hosting page, but the number tells you almost nothing about how well your Minecraft, Rust, or CS2 server will survive an attack. Here's what actually matters.
Game traffic is mostly UDP
Most game servers run on UDP, which is much harder to filter than TCP. UDP floods can saturate links cheaply, and naive scrubbers often drop legitimate player packets along with the attack.
Game-aware filtering
The best mitigation systems understand the handshake of your specific game. They can tell a real Minecraft login attempt from a spoofed packet, and only forward valid traffic. SurfNode's edge nodes do this for 30+ games out of the box.
What to ask your host
- Is filtering at the edge or only at the destination?
- Does it understand your game's protocol?
- What's the typical mitigation latency added during an attack?
- Are you charged extra for "always-on" protection?
If the answer to any of these is hand-wavy, keep looking. Bandwidth alone doesn't save you.
