Apex Legends Migrates to Amazon GameLift Servers in Just 10 Days
Respawn Entertainment recently migrated Apex Legends to Amazon GameLift Servers, completing the traffic cutover in just 10 days with no player-facing downtime… A core priority for Respawn was conducting integration and technical validation without disrupting the development teams or Apex players….
Respawn Entertainment recently migrated Apex Legends to Amazon GameLift Servers, completing the traffic cutover in just 10 days with no player-facing downtime.
A core priority for Respawn was conducting integration and technical validation without disrupting the development teams or Apex players. AWS was able to meet that need by partnering with AWS Partner Code Wizards Group and leveraging the Amazon GameLift Migration Support Program to deliver a thorough, phased, low-risk migration plan—resulting in one of the largest AWS-led infrastructure transitions ever completed for a live service game.
Setting the priorities
As a live service game, Apex Legends is constantly evolving—not just in gameplay and content, but in the quality of its operations. With millions of players worldwide, Respawn needed more visibility, consistency, and flexibility in their infrastructure. When they began exploring modern hosting options with AWS and Amazon GameLift, they outlined three clear goals:
1. Scaling Player Experience
The infrastructure needed to scale with peak player demand during new seasons and events.
2. Modernize Hosting
Moving from a hybrid infrastructure with bare metal to a cloud-based platform provides a scalable gameplay environment for Apex’s global player base.
3. Maintain Dev Velocity
Any new solution had to integrate smoothly with Respawn’s existing workflows for building, testing, and deploying updates—without slowing down the pace of game development.
“Minimizing the disruption for our player population was a critical success factor for the migration. The coordinated effort between Respawn and the Amazon GameLift Servers team made this a reality.” — Robert LaCruise, Principal Technical Director, Online Gaming Services, Apex Legends
Planning the migration
To ensure Amazon GameLift Servers could meet these needs, Respawn worked with AWS and Code Wizards Group, a long-standing games industry specialist migration partners, to run a detailed evaluation. Amazon GameLift brought experience from supporting top games like Dead by Daylight, Mortal Kombat 1, and Marvel SNAP—plus the ability to scale up to 100 million concurrent players.
Together, the teams defined three key technical proof-of-concepts:
- Main Flow: Smooth matchmaking and server placement for all players
- Zero Downtime Updates: Ability to push changes without player disruption
- Metrics & Observability: Real-time data to monitor and improve player experience
“We believe their (AWS) services offer the best overall player facing performance when compared to other alternatives. Additionally, AWS servers are standard for many other FPS titles and we believe our players will see the benefits of this migration globally.” — Robert LaCruise, Principal Technical Director, Online Gaming Services, Apex Legends
Proof-of-concept in action
To validate the migration strategy, the teams built and tested several new technologies.
Seamless Matchmaking
The first step was to build a “player redirect layer” that could reroute players to Amazon GameLift Servers without changing the game backend logic, avoiding risky code changes and unnecessary QA cycles. A Game Server Wrapper was also created to allow utilizing the existing game server build without changes, and to add observability and logging around existing infrastructure. Both were developed by Code Wizards Group and key to the migration.
“We knew that player experience was super important to Respawn and their players. We created the Wrapper and Portal to enable this. The end result was no downtime to the player experience.” — Stuart Muckley, CEO & Founder, Code Wizards Group
Zero Downtime Updates
Code Wizards developed a system that automatically migrates players to upgraded servers after their match ends—deploying updates without interrupting gameplay.
“Player-facing goals were formalized into our architecture designs… ensuring that zero downtime deployments were a reality from start to finish.” — Jared Cugno, Head of Engineering, Apex Legends
Real-Time Monitoring
Monitoring and observability services provide Respawn a clear view into session health, latency, and server performance—allowing timely detection and resolution of issues.
“We are leveraging the global infrastructure of AWS to continuously optimize server and network performance. We have more options and flexibility on the new infrastructure platform.” — Robert LaCruise, Principal Technical Director, Online Gaming Services, Apex Legends
Following initial validation, these systems went through extensive production-level testing, instance benchmarking, and performance tuning.
On the backend, Respawn now benefits from:
- AWS’s global, low-latency network
- AWS’s tools for server debugging and tuning
- Improved cost efficiency with compute instance choice
- Preserved existing development pipelines using the wrapper and redirect layer.
- More control over hosting through Amazon GameLift Servers APIs like TerminationGameSession and queue placement override which enabled the wrapper and player redirect layer to function
Respawn didn’t have to slow down development or rethink their pipelines and they gained better tools—without giving up speed.
Figure 1: Translation layer redirecting traffic to Amazon GameLift Servers.
The 10 day migration
Following the evaluation phase, Respawn moved forward with a phased, region-by-region traffic cutover to Amazon GameLift Servers—starting with the smallest geographies to minimize player impact and build confidence along the way. AWS provided direct engineering support, real-time observability tooling, and rollback systems tested during pre-launch simulations to ensure stability throughout the process.
Ahead of the cutover, the teams defined rollback thresholds, validated alerting pipelines, and ran mock migrations to ensure stability. During the actual migration, they continuously monitored:
- Player connectivity
- Latency and jitter
- Queue times
- Match placement success rates
Thanks to automated systems and real-time alerts, the teams were ready to roll back or step in instantly, if needed. But the migration proceeded smoothly—with no player-facing downtime throughout the entire 10-day process.
Respawn shared early results in this update last month to their playerbase, while they continue to monitor performance and optimize the ongoing player experience.
Conclusion
The migration of Apex Legends to Amazon GameLift Servers shows what’s possible when infrastructure modernization is done with players in mind.
Backed by AWS and Code Wizards Group, Respawn delivered a high-stakes migration in record time—without disrupting gameplay or development pipelines. .
“The migration team were put through their paces several times… They did it well, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the future holds.” — Jared Cugno, Head of Engineering, Apex Legends
Want to learn more about Amazon GameLift Servers or how the migration program could work for your game? Visit aws.amazon.com/gamelift or contact an AWS representative.
Image: the Respawn, Code Wizards Group, and Amazon GameLift Servers teams.
Further reading
Author: Michael Jackson