Founded in 2009 by former Rockstar developers Lee Hutchinson and Matt Sheppard, Double Eleven has grown from a loft in Durham into an international game development powerhouse. Double Eleven has built a reputation for reimagining and reinventing major titles for new platforms—bringing beloved franchises like Minecraft Dungeons, Prison Architect, and Fallout 76 to new audiences.

One of its most prominent projects is Rust: Console Edition, developed in partnership with Facepunch Studios. As Will Blackburn, Associate Lead of the Live Services team for Rust, explained, “Double Eleven’s differentiator is probably the expertise in console ports. We squeeze games that technically wouldn’t fit on a console out of the box, and make them run.”

Using DigitalOcean to Power Global Gameplay

Running massive multiplayer games like Rust requires reliable infrastructure that can handle unpredictable spikes in player demand. Double Eleven leverages nearly 500 DigitalOcean Droplets to host Rust instances, supporting more than 50,000 concurrent players worldwide.

Blackburn shared: “We’re still using DigitalOcean after all these years, with 400, nearly 500 droplets to host the Rust instances. We’re passing 50,000 capacity of players onto your infrastructure—and it works. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.”

DigitalOcean’s flexibility was crucial during the launch of Rust Gen 9 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X. Player numbers surged overnight, hitting peaks of over 138,000 players. “We spoke to Ali [our DigitalOcean support manager], told him we were going to scale up to 800 servers. There was no headache, just positive confidence outcome all the way through. The launch was a huge success.”

Why Double Eleven Chooses DigitalOcean

For Double Eleven, it’s not just about infrastructure—it’s also about people.

• Proactive Support: “Ali checks in at least once a month. I never feel like you guys are a million miles away. Even when I don’t need you, it’s nice to hear, ‘Hi, is everything going all right?’ That proactive attitude makes me confident to stay with DigitalOcean.”

• Resilience Under Pressure: In a community as active as Rust, DDoS attacks are a constant challenge. “DigitalOcean’s turnaround on DDoS attacks is usually quicker than other providers we use. You’re not just a button on a screen—you work with us to make sure our players have the best experience possible.”

• Ease of Use: Coming from a business enterprise background, Blackburn compared DigitalOcean favorably to hyperscalers. “I’ve got a lot of expertise dealing with Google, AWS and Azure, I don’t bat an eyelid switching to DigitalOcean. It’s as easy to spool up a Droplet as it is to spin on VM’s on the big three, but DigitalOcean is far more proactive and in touch.”

Looking Ahead

While Droplets remain the foundation of Rust’s server infrastructure, they continue exploring new possibilities with DigitalOcean. “We want to turn the Rust server into a Docker image and move to Kubernetes for more flexibility. Having deployable images will make life easier, and we know DigitalOcean provides that functionality.”

With Rust’s community growing and new titles on the horizon, Double Eleven sees DigitalOcean as a long-term partner. “The key thing is, DigitalOcean is still thinking about us—even when we’re not thinking about DigitalOcean. That makes all the difference.”