Billing and Lifecycle

How hosting is billed#

Hosting is paid per game. When you launch on a paid tier, the Launch wizard creates a Stripe subscription for that game at the tier's price, and the subscription renews until you cancel it. Free community hosting has no subscription and nothing on this page about payments applies to it; its offline/online controls are covered below.

Two cadences are available, chosen in the Launch wizard's Hosting step with the Annual billing toggle:

The dashboard always shows prices as a per-month figure so tiers compare directly; on annual billing that figure is the annual price divided by twelve. The cadence is fixed when you launch. The Change Hosting Plan page keeps your current cadence when you move between tiers.

Current paid tiers and what they cost on each cadence:

Tier specifications (vCPU, RAM, included transfer) and regions are listed in Launch and Hosting.

Where billing lives on the dashboard#

Open your game on the Creator Dashboard. Two places show hosting and billing:

• Game Details tab → Hosting & Billing (only for games launched on a paid tier). Shows Plan, Region, Cost (with an "(annual)" marker when applicable) and Status, plus the Next billing date and the action buttons Change Tier / Region, Take Offline or Bring Online, and Cancel Hosting or Resume Hosting.
• Production tab (shown once a game has launched, free or paid). The header card shows the live/offline status with Stop Production, Bring Online, Cancel Hosting or Resume Hosting as appropriate; the metrics row includes Monthly Cost with the next bill date; Server Details lists the Hosting Plan and Billing Status; and the red Reset to Development card sits at the bottom.

Billing Status is one of:

Change tier or region#

Moving to a bigger or smaller tier, or to another region, rebuilds the server: the platform backs up player saves, destroys the current server, provisions a new one with the new size or location, and restores the saves onto it. The page warns that this causes ~2-5 minutes of downtime and that "Connected players will be disconnected while the server restarts with the new configuration."

1. On the Game Details tab, under Hosting & Billing, click Change Tier / Region. The Change Hosting Plan page opens.
2. Under Hosting Tier, pick a tier. Your present tier is tagged Current. Each card shows the per-month price on your cadence, vCPUs, RAM and Up to N players.
3. Under Server Region, pick a region. Your present region is tagged Current.
4. Click Review Changes (enabled only when something changed).
5. The Confirm Changes card summarizes Tier and Region changes and, for a tier change, the Monthly cost change (for example +$14.40/mo). Click Apply Changes. Back returns to the selection; Cancel on the first step abandons the change.

What the platform does:

• A tier change updates the Stripe subscription to the new price immediately with proration, so you are credited for unused time on the old tier and charged for the remainder of the period on the new one. The cadence (monthly or annual) is unchanged.
• A region change does not alter the price.
• The game must be Live to change tier or region; an offline game refuses with "Game must be live to change tier" (or region). A tier change also requires an active subscription, so it is not available on free community hosting.
• While the migration runs the game's badge shows Updating and then Provisioning; the game returns to Live when the new server reports in. If the migration fails, the error is shown on the page and the in-flight badge is cleared.

Take a game offline and bring it back#

Going offline stops the game server without ending anything else. Players are disconnected and cannot join; the game shows as Offline on the dashboard and drops out of players' Discover page within a few minutes; your builds, version history and hosting assignment remain.

To take a live game offline:

1. On the Production tab click Stop Production, or on the Game Details tab under Hosting & Billing click Take Offline.
2. A Take server offline? dialog warns that players will be disconnected and asks you to type the game's name to confirm. Click Take Offline.

The Production header now reads Server is offline with "Players can't connect. Billing is paused. Your save data is preserved for 30 days.", and the History tab records Taken offline.

To bring it back, click Bring Online on either tab. The game's badge shows Updating while the server redeploys the build that was live before, then Live again; the History tab records Brought online. Bringing a game online is allowed when billing is active or when there is no subscription at all (free community hosting). It is refused while billing is past_due or canceled; use Resume Hosting instead.

What happens to the server while a game is offline:

• Free community hosting: the container is stopped; its data folder is kept, so saves survive an offline/online cycle.
• Dedicated hosting: the container is stopped and the server machine is kept for 30 days. A daily cleanup (05:00 UTC) then backs up the save data to platform storage and releases the machine. Bring Online after that point provisions a fresh server and restores the saved backup onto it.

Cancel and resume hosting#

Cancel Hosting ends the subscription at the end of the current billing period, so you keep the time you already paid for.

1. On the Production tab or under Hosting & Billing, click Cancel Hosting (only shown while billing is active).
2. The Cancel hosting? dialog explains that "Your Stripe subscription will end at the current billing period. You can resume anytime before then." Type the game's name and click Cancel Hosting.

Billing status changes to canceled and the History tab records Hosting canceled. The game keeps running until the period ends. When Stripe ends the subscription, the platform backs up player saves (with one retry), stops the server, releases the dedicated machine, and sets the game to Offline with billing canceled. The dashboard then shows a red Server Stopped banner: "Your hosting subscription has been canceled. Resume to bring your game back online."

Resume Hosting reverses a cancellation. Click it on the Production tab, under Hosting & Billing, or on the Server Stopped banner:

• Before the period ends, it simply removes the scheduled cancellation; the subscription renews as normal.
• After the server has been stopped, it also brings the game back: a new server is provisioned if the old one was released (saves are restored from the backup), or the build is redeployed onto the existing server. Billing returns to active and the History tab records Hosting resumed.

Payment failures and the grace period#

If a renewal payment fails, billing status becomes past_due and a seven-day grace period starts. Repeat failure notices never shorten it.

• While the game is live, the game page shows a yellow Payment Failed banner: "Update your payment method within N days or your server will be stopped." Its Update Payment button clears the grace deadline and sets billing back to active on the game.
• Each day at 04:30 UTC the platform stops the server of any live game whose grace period has expired. The game becomes Offline, the History tab records Offline (billing), and the banner changes to the red Server Stopped: "Your server was stopped due to unpaid billing. Update your payment method to bring it back online." with a Resume Hosting button.
• A game stopped for billing follows the same 30-day rule as any offline game: after 30 days its server machine is released and its saves are backed up, and resuming provisions a new one.

Reset to Development#

The bottom of the Production tab carries a red card, Reset to Development, described as "Testing-only." It undoes a launch so you can run the Launch wizard again:

• Cancels the Stripe subscription immediately with a prorated refund.
• Destroys the dedicated server and deletes live player saves.
• Returns any live build to Ready and clears the version labels, hosting, billing and schedule fields.
• Sets the game's state back to Development and its visibility to private.
• Keeps builds, beta and game metadata (name, description, tags, art).

Click Reset to Development (testing), type the game's name in the Reset to Development? dialog and confirm with Reset. You land back on the Game Details tab. Player data is not recoverable afterwards; use Take Offline or Cancel Hosting when you only want to stop the server.

Reference#

Lifecycle actions#

Automatic platform jobs#

With AI (MCP)#

There are no MCP tools for billing actions; tier, region, cancel, resume and offline/online are dashboard-only. get_live_status reports whether the game is currently deployed and its server host, port and status, and get_deploy_status or wait_for_deploy follow the deploy job the platform runs when a game is brought online.