Can I host game servers on a rented dedicated server?

Which "dedicated server" does this page mean?

In games, a "dedicated server" is a program that hosts the world with no player attached. In hosting, it is a whole physical machine you rent. This page is about the second: renting a machine to run the first.

Palworld, Valheim or Counter-Strike 2 ship their dedicated server as separate software, usually installed with SteamCMD. You can run it on a home PC. A rented server keeps the world online when your PC is off, with a fixed public IP and no home router to configure.

Which games publish a Linux dedicated server?

We checked each game's own documentation on 30 October 2026. Ironatoll installs Linux only, so a game needs a native Linux server to run here.

How do I open the game's ports in the firewall?

Open only the game port, keep SSH, and drop everything else. Admin consoles such as RCON stay closed, or open to your own IP only. Run each game under its own unprivileged user, never as root, and install it with the SteamCMD command from the game's own guide.

The nftables ruleset below opens the defaults from the table. Delete the lines for games you do not run. Where the documentation we read names no protocol, the rule opens both TCP and UDP.

#!/usr/sbin/nft -f
flush ruleset

table inet filter {
  chain input {
    type filter hook input priority 0; policy drop;
    ct state established,related accept
    iif "lo" accept
    meta l4proto ipv6-icmp accept
    tcp dport 22 accept
    tcp dport 25565 accept                                   # Minecraft Java
    meta l4proto { tcp, udp } th dport { 2456-2457 } accept  # Valheim
    meta l4proto { tcp, udp } th dport 27015 accept          # Counter-Strike 2
    udp dport 8211 accept                                    # Palworld
    udp dport 28015 accept                                   # Rust
  }
}

Does CPU single-thread speed matter for a game server?

Yes: for a game server, one fast core usually beats many slow ones. The ARK wiki states the rule for its own server: single-thread performance is "preferred over having more cores". Facepunch's Rust wiki says that the more players you have, the faster the CPU needs to be.

Check the CPU model before you rent. According to Ironatoll's check of 30 October 2026, 27 of 34 active hosts sold their cheapest dedicated server on a CPU launched before 2018. Old server chips have many cores but slow ones. Our Ryzen or EPYC comparison explains which platform has the faster single core.

Do game servers need DDoS protection?

A public game server is the most exposed thing you can run: every player who joins learns its IP address. And a web CDN does not help here. Cloudflare's proxied records carry HTTP and HTTPS only; covering every TCP and UDP port through Spectrum needs its Enterprise plan.

Ironatoll's rule: Against DDoS attacks we promise nothing beyond the default handling of the datacenter network. For a private server with friends, a firewall and a server password are usually enough. For a large public server, add a filtering service in front of the machine, or compare hosts in our ranking of offshore dedicated server providers. Our page on whether you need DDoS protection on a dedicated server covers the options.

Which Ironatoll plan fits my game server?

Size RAM from the game's own figures, then add room for the system. Several servers fit on one machine, each on its own port. To isolate them, run one VM per game: see how to install Proxmox on a dedicated server. Every plan is on how much an Ironatoll dedicated server costs.