How to Promote Your Game Server and Find Players

Most people who start a game server assume players will find it through the game's built-in server list. It rarely works. Those lists often show only a selection of servers, sometimes chosen by the player's location, and with thousands of servers for a popular game yours is a needle in a haystack. Anyone who wants a full server should take finding players into their own hands.

Build your own home base

Set up a Discord server, a social media page or a simple website. It gives you:

• Somewhere to put every detail players need: rules, mods, connection info and wipe dates.
• A way to stay in touch with players who are not in the game.
• Space to run competitions and special events.
• A page you can point people to when you advertise elsewhere.

Even a basic Discord with a few channels is a big improvement over having nothing.

List your server on ranking sites

Server listing sites exist for almost every popular game. Each works a little differently, but most let players find and compare servers, and many include a voting system that helps active servers rise. Some have paid options to move you up the list.

• Search for "your game servers" and add yourself to the top handful of results.
• Look at BattleMetrics and GameTracker, which cover many games, plus any site dedicated to your specific game.
• Encourage your players to vote. Ranking depends on it, and it costs them nothing.

Sites come and go, so check any listing still works before you put effort into it.

Advertise where the community already is

Almost every game has a community: an official forum, a subreddit, a Steam discussion board or an official Discord. Most have a place to advertise servers, often a dedicated channel, thread or subreddit.

• Read the rules of each community before posting.
• Keep the post clear: game, mods, player count, wipe schedule, how to join.
• Do not spam. One good post is better than five ignored ones.
• Reply to comments, and be a member of the community, not just an advertiser.

Some examples of places players look for servers:

• ARK: Survival Evolved: the official forums have a server advertisement section, and there are subreddits such as r/playarkservers and r/arkserverlist.
• Rust: r/playrustservers is the best known.
• Conan Exiles: r/ConanExilesServers, the official Funcom forums and a couple of community admin Discords.

For any other game, a search for "game name server advertising" or "game name server list subreddit" will find the equivalent.

Play by the publisher's rules

Every game publisher has terms for running community servers, and the consequences of breaking them can be serious.

• Never fake your player numbers or listing details.
• Do not use plugins or mods that the game's rules do not allow on servers that appear in official community lists. Publishers such as Facepunch (Rust) are known to ban server IPs for this.
• Read the community server guidelines for your game before you go live, and check them again after big updates.

A ban can wipe out months of work, and a blacklisted server will not be found by the players you tried to attract.

Be an admin players trust

Promotion only gets people through the door. Whether they stay depends on how the server is run.

• Keep your admin team active, friendly and responsive.
• Avoid admin abuse and accusations of it at all costs. A rogue admin can ruin a community.
• Make sure your admins enforce the rules your community has agreed to.

Next steps

Promotion is one part of a longer process. Read How to Build a Thriving Game Server Community for the full plan, and How to Keep Your Players Active and Engaged to keep the players you win.