If you run a popular game server, a DDoS attack is a question of when, not if. Rivals, banned players and bored attackers all do it. The key thing to understand: the DDoS protection that actually works happens at the network, not on your server. Here is what is real and what is not.
What a DDoS attack actually is
A distributed denial-of-service attack floods your server with more traffic than its connection can handle. The server itself may be fine, but the pipe to it is full, so real players cannot get through. Because the traffic comes from many machines at once, you cannot just block one IP.
There are two broad types:
- Volumetric floods that saturate your bandwidth. These are the most common against game servers.
- Application or protocol attacks that exhaust the server with malformed or excessive requests.
What does not stop a serious attack
- A software firewall on the server. By the time traffic reaches your box, the pipe is already full. iptables cannot widen your connection.
- Hiding your IP after the fact. Once an attacker knows the address, changing it is disruptive and only buys time.
- A bigger server. More CPU does not help when the problem is saturated bandwidth.
What actually works
1. Network-edge DDoS filtering. Real protection sits in front of your server, on infrastructure with far more capacity than any attack, and scrubs the bad traffic before it reaches you. This is the single most important factor, and it is something the host provides, not something you bolt on later. Every Vastrox plan includes DDoS filtering at the network edge for exactly this reason.
2. Keep your real IP private. Use the host-provided address and any proxy or filtering front end. Do not paste your raw server IP in public Discords. Self-hosting from home is risky precisely because it exposes your home connection.
3. Lock down the box behind the filtering. A firewall still matters for controlling which services are reachable. Allow only your game and query ports. See How to secure a Linux VPS.
4. Separate query and game traffic where you can. Some attacks abuse the query port, so rate-limiting or filtering it removes a common vector.
If you are being attacked right now
- Confirm it is an attack, not server-side lag. If your bandwidth graph is pinned and players cannot connect while the server CPU is calm, it is a flood. Use How to fix game server lag to rule out the other cause.
- Make sure DDoS protection is actually enabled for the server.
- Contact your host. On filtered infrastructure, mitigation is usually automatic, but support can confirm and tune it.
FAQ
Can I stop a DDoS attack with a firewall on my server?
No. A flood saturates your connection before it reaches the firewall. Filtering has to happen upstream, on the network.
Why is hosting from home a bad idea for game servers?
It exposes your home IP and bandwidth. One attack can knock your whole household offline, and home connections have no DDoS filtering.
Does Vastrox include DDoS protection?
Yes. Filtering runs at the network edge on every plan, so attacks are scrubbed before they reach your server.
Worried about attacks? Talk to our team. Protection is built in, not an add-on.