Load testing is an umbrella term for testing your game’s capacity and capabilities to handle user traffic or “load” under different circumstances. Our penetration testing services prepare you for malicious actors and hackers but how prepared is your system for a sudden spike of users or for an extended period of use from a significant user base beyond your norm?
The key requirements to have a stable system regarding load is scalability, both up and down. This ensures your game or application can handle surges of traffic but doesn’t leave you at that level when the load drops down. Let’s take a look at Magic Media’s load testing services, what each entails, why you need load testing, and look at our team’s proprietary load testing tool: Swarm.
Types of Load Testing
As mentioned, load testing is an umbrella term. When undergoing load testing, you may leverage one or several of these types of load testing depending on your product and expected type of user traffic. Each serve a unique purpose in testing your system’s capacity. They are: Spike Testing, Soak Testing, Stress Testing, and Peak Testing.
Spike Testing
Spike is typically the shortest of the load testing engagements. Magic Media’s load testers will simulate a sudden and rapid spike of users. This spike is designed to exceed your expected capacity and your max capacity. This will help show how your system handles sudden sharp spikes of user traffic which are common during launch days, major update releases, or content drops.
Soak Testing
Soak testing is the longest form of load testing. At a minimum, twelve hours and twenty-four at a maximum, this is a long soak of constant user activity. Targeted just above your expected user traffic, this is a great way to see how your system handles its processes and updates despite a constant flow of traffic. Video game leaderboards are a good example of function affected by soak testing and MMO games often benefit from this load testing engagement.
Stress Testing
The most common form of load testing and usually what one refers to when mentioning a load or performance test. This is a simple and straightforward load test. From a state of zero or low user numbers, our load testing team slowly and steadily increase users. This is done until your system crashes. This is a great way to see how your system simply deals with high volumes and eventually unstable amounts of traffic. It will show you where your system struggles and where it breaks.
Peak Testing
Finally, peak testing simulates a sustained high volume of traffic. Just below your max design capacity, so not as high as spike. And for a sustained period, but not as long as soak. This test is an excellent simulation when peak traffic is expected and how your system handles it as well as how it scales up and down. This is good for games expecting traffic in that post-work evening time or at the end of a month for accountancy platforms.
Do I Need Load Testing?
The answer is absolutely! Our cybersecurity and load testing teams are determined to help the digital world stay safe, stable, and secure. Showing clients where their system is vulnerable or where it is struggling is the first step in fixing the problem and ensuring it never reaches the user or player. In this sense, your system’s stability is directly linked to user satisfaction and user loyalty. Two pillars upon which revenue streams can be balanced on.
For any major events, updates, or content drops, there is nothing more frustrating than being unable to even participate. Systems that struggle significantly and fail during these moments will see a direct and tangible impact on their user satisfaction. If it continues or remains unaddressed, this leads to an unsatisfied community which means a lower likelihood of new audiences. Eventually, it will be a direct cause of users dropping and not returning.
This then directly affects your revenue. It’s a simple arithmetic that if you have an unsatisfied user base, you’re less likely to grow. Fewer interactions and less growth has a simple outcome. However, in addition to this potential issue, your platform stability and capacity to scale is another potential revenue loss. If your system cannot fluidly scale down when it is not needed, you are wasting money on a high-cost system for no reason. Performance is worth the investment.
Load Testing with Swarm
A proprietary tool created and developed entirely by our load testing and cybersecurity team at Cyrex, Swarm is a one-of-a-kind tool. Built using AWS, Swarm is a headless, cloud-based load testing tool. Oriented for video games, it is a load testing tool that can handle testing needs for any number of users without the taxing hardware costs and requirements.
Designed on a cost-per-use basis, Swarm is designed with a bespoke user journey ensuring that you get as realistic a load testing process as possible. Hundreds of thousands of load testing bots go about interacting with your game, registering, completing, and attaining rewards, allowing us to see a truly comprehensive load test.
This incredible tool, designed by the gold standard in load and penetration testing, provides out-of-the-box support to any standard networking library that gaming applications use. For most clients, it is a seamless process. For those with custom engines and networks, it only takes some custom development on our side to have it working and ready for your needs.
To leverage Magic Media’s load testing expertize and our industry-leading load testing tools, get in touch today. Our cybersecurity and load testing services cannot be matched nor can our one-stop studio of gaming and entertainment offerings such as full-cycle game development, game art production, video production, and much more.
