Amazon GameLift - Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China
Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Amazon GameLift

Amazon GameLift is a fully managed service for deploying, operating, and scaling your session-based multiplayer game servers in the cloud. Amazon GameLift replaces the work required to host your own game servers, including buying and setting up hardware, and managing ongoing activity, security, storage, and performance tracking. The Amazon GameLift auto-scaling capabilities provide additional protection from having to pay for more resources than you need, while helping to ensure that your players can find and join games with minimal waiting. Amazon GameLift provides robust tool for matchmaking with FlexMatch.

Region Availability

Amazon GameLift is available in the following regions in China:

  • Beijing Region

  • Ningxia Region

Feature Availability and Implementation Differences

The Amazon Web Services in China implementation of Amazon GameLift is unique in the following ways:

  • Amazon Graviton instance types are not available in Amazon GameLift.

  • Fleets that are created and reside in a China region cannot deploy instances to locations other than the fleet's home region. In addition, fleets that reside outside of a China region cannot deploy instances to remote locations in a China region.

  • For any queues that are created and run in a China region, they must contain only destinations (either fleets or aliases) that are also in the China region; destinations outside of the China region cannot be used. In addition, destinations that run in a China region cannot be used by a queue that is outside of the China region.

  • For FlexMatch matchmaking, matchmaking configurations that are created and run in a China region must use only queues that are also in the China region; queues in other regions cannot be used. In addition, queues that run in a China region cannot be used by a matchmaking configuration that is not in a China region.

  • When securely accessing Amazon services from Amazon GameLift-hosted instances, instances in fleets that are deployed in a China region can only access other Amazon resources in the region; they cannot access Amazon resources in other regions. In addition, other Amazon resources that are deployed in a China region cannot be accessed by instances in fleets that are deployed in a different region.

  • Because Amazon Certificate Manager is not available in the China Regions, TLS certificate generation is not supported. New fleets must have the certificate configuration set to disabled.

  • Use of AMD instances for Amazon GameLift FleetIQ game server groups is not available in the China Regions.

  • Game server builds for the Amazon Linux 2023 operating system are not supported.

  • The use of personal compute resources with Amazon GameLift Anywhere is not supported.

  • Server SDK 5.x is not supported; this includes the use of C++, C#, and Go.

  • Server side encryption for Amazon SNS topics is not supported.

Guides and References

Amazon Web Services in China user guides are available in HTML and PDF, in both Chinese and English. API references are available in HTML and PDF. Some API references may be available only in English. Currently, not all API references are available in the Beijing and Ningxia Regions. Links to some API references will take you to the global Amazon Web Services site. Note that some features and functionality described in the guides and references may not be available in the current Amazon Web Services in China release.

General Information About Amazon Web Services in China

The following information applies to all Amazon Web Services that are available in the China Regions.

Amazon Web Services Accounts in the China Regions

To use services in the Beijing and Ningxia Regions, you need an account and credentials specific to each of those Regions.

  • Accounts and credentials for other Amazon Regions will not work for services operating in the Beijing and Ningxia Regions.

  • Accounts and credentials for the Beijing and Ningxia Regions will not work for other Amazon Regions.

  • For more information, see Signup, Accounts, and Credentials.

Domain for Amazon Web Services in China

The domain for Amazon Web Services in China is www.amazonaws.cn.

Endpoints & Amazon Resource Names (ARNs)

For information about endpoints and ARNs in Amazon Web Services in China, see Endpoints and ARNs for Amazon Web Services in China.

Availability Zones for the China Regions

  • In the Beijing Region, there are three Availability Zones.

  • In the Ningxia Region, there are three Availability Zones.

General Information for Amazon Web Services in China

The following applies to all Amazon Web Services that are available in the China Regions. For detailed information about specific Amazon Web Services, see the service-specific topic in this guide.

  • Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM)

    • You can grant or deny a service access to resources using the Principal policy element.

    • Service principal values vary by Region.

  • EC2-Classic Platform

    • The EC2-Classic platform is not supported.

  • Free Usage Tier

    • The free usage tier is supported in the Ningxia Region.

    • The free usage tier is not supported in the Beijing Region.

Amazon Web Services Console

The console for Amazon Web Services in China is unique to China. The screenshots in the Amazon Web Services guides might differ from what you see on your console. For information about differences in service functionality, see the topics for each service in this guide.

Code Examples

The Amazon Web Services documentation might include endpoints and ARNs in code examples that are not specific to the Beijing and Ningxia Regions. When using examples, verify you are using the endpoints and ARNs for your Region.