GameShield uses the subscription billing method. The price for one-year subscription is calculated based on the clean bandwidth and the number of standalone instances. This topic describes the billing rules, examples, and relevant terms.

Notice
  • The initial number of daily active units (DAUs) for newly purchased GameShield instance is changed from 30,000 to 80,000 since May 1, 2020. For GameShield instances purchased between April 1, 2020 and May 1, 2020, the initial number of DAUs is automatically increased to 80,000.
  • The billing method of GameShield has been updated since April 1, 2020 for your convenience. The new billing method removes the limit on the number of applications bound to a GameShield instance that you purchase. However, the new billing method places a limit on the number of DAUs. Even if the billing method is updated, updated instances still provide around-the-clock defense for your services. For more information, see Terms.

(Not supported) Five-day unconditional refunds

GameShield supports only the subscription billing method. GameShield instances do not support five-day unconditional refunds.

Billing rules

The one-year subscription price for a GameShield instance with default specifications is USD 150,943.39.

The default instance specifications contain one standalone instance, 100 Mbit/s of clean bandwidth, and 80,000 DAUs.

You can upgrade the default instance specifications as required. To upgrade specifications, you can increase standalone instances and clean bandwidth. DAUs are increased in proportion to the increase of standalone instances and clean bandwidth. The number of DAUs after the increase is calculated as follows: 
DAUs = 80,000 + (Number of standalone instances - 1) × 50,000 + (Clean bandwidth - 100) × 300

The following table describes the billing items of GameShield instances, and lists the monthly subscription prices of billing items.

Billing item Description Monthly subscription price
Standalone instance A standalone GameShield instance supports a gateway capacity of 100,000 queries per second (QPS) and contains 10 defense nodes. Resources are isolated among instances.

The system automatically increases 50,000 DAUs each time an instance is added.

We recommend that you add standalone instances if your services must be isolated from each other.

USD 7,861.64 per instance
Clean bandwidth It indicates the total bandwidth that is used by all the protected services. The 95th percentile bandwidth billing method is applied. You are billed by calendar month based on the bandwidth that you use to protect services.

The system automatically increases 300 DAUs for each additional clean bandwidth of 1 Mbit/s. The system automatically configures one defense node for each additional clean bandwidth of 10 Mbit/s.

USD 47.17 per Mbit/s
DAU You are billed based on the number of DAUs. By default, 80,000 DAUs are allowed.

DAUs cannot be independently added. To add DAUs, you must increase the clean bandwidth or standalone instances.

None
Notice If the total bandwidth required by the protected services or the number of required DAUs exceeds your existing specifications, you must upgrade GameShield. For more information, see Upgrade GameShield specifications.

Billing examples

Example 1: Query subscription prices and the number of DAUs

In this example, purchase one standalone instance. You can adjust the clean bandwidth to obtain different numbers of DAUs and defense nodes. The following table lists the number of DAUs and monthly subscription prices for different bandwidths.

Number of DAUs Number of instances Clean bandwidth (unit: Mbit/s) Number of nodes Monthly subscription price
80000 1 100 10 USD 12,578.62
110000 1 200 20 USD 17,295.61
155000 1 350 35 USD 24,371.08
200000 1 500 50 USD 31,446.56
300000 1 1000 100 USD 55,031.48
Note Defense nodes and gateways are not priced independently. The specifications of defense nodes and gateways are based on the number of standalone instances and the clean bandwidth that you purchase. If you need additional defense nodes and gateways, upgrade GameShield. For more information, see Upgrade GameShield specifications.

Example 2: Protect a single game service

In this example, protect a single game service by using GameShield. The total bandwidth that is used by the protected service is 200 Mbit/s, and the total number of DAUs is 100,000. We recommend that you purchase an instance with default specifications and increase the clean bandwidth of the instance that you purchase to 200 Mbit/s. Then, the system increases the number of DAUs to 110,000. In this case, both clean bandwidth and DAUs can meet your business needs.

The total number of DAUs after the increase is calculated as follows: 
110,000 = 80,000 + (200 - 100) * 300
The yearly subscription price is calculated as follows: 
USD 207,547.39 = USD 150,943.39 + (200 Mbit/s - 100 Mbit/s) × USD 47.17 per Mbit/s × 12

Example 3: Protect multiple game services

In this example, protect three game services by using GameShield. The total bandwidth that is used by the protected services is 150 Mbit/s, and the total number of DAUs is 210,000. We recommend that you purchase three instances with default specifications and increase the clean bandwidth to 200 Mbit/s. Then, the system increases the number of DAUs to 210,000. In this case, both clean bandwidth and DAUs can meet your business needs.

The total number of DAUs after the increase is calculated as follows: 
210,000 = 80,000 + (3 - 1) * 50,000 + (200 - 100) * 300
The yearly subscription price is calculated as follows: 
USD 396,226.75 = USD 150,943.39 + ((3 instances - 1 instance) × USD 7,861.64 per instance + (200 Mbit/s - 100 Mbit/s) × USD 47.17 per Mbit/s) × 12

Terms

  • Around-the-clock defense

    Indicates that GameShield uses all the available cleansing resources in the region where your service resides to ensure service continuity.

    Notice If your service experiences attacks that affect the infrastructure of Alibaba Cloud data centers, Alibaba Cloud reserves the rights to throttle traffic. If traffic throttling occurs on your GameShield instances, your service may slow down for a short period of time or become unavailable.
  • DAU
    Indicates the daily active devices for all the services that are protected by GameShield. The number of DAUs is calculated based on the following rules:
    • Only Android and iOS devices are considered when the number of DAUs is calculated.
      Notice Windows devices are not considered when the number of DAUs is calculated. If this rule changes, you will recieve notifications.
    • If a device is active at various points in time in a day, the device is considered as only one DAU. You can check the actual number of DAUs in the GameShield console.
  • Standalone instance

    Indicates a GameShield instance that has independent resources.

    GameShield has removed the limit on the number of applications that are bound to a single instance since April 1, 2020. However, we recommend that you bind a standalone instance to each service.
    Warning If you bind multiple applications to a single instance, your service may experience the following risks.
    Risk Description Solution
    Scheduling center An independent scheduling center is configured for each standalone instance. If a scheduling center for a standalone instance is monitored or blocked, all services that use the AccessKey pair for the standalone instance are affected.
    • Deploy a standalone instance for each service. This ensures that scheduling centers for standalone instances are isolated from each other.
    • Enable hotfix for applications. This allows you to change the AccessKey pairs and group names of applications with the minimized downtime.
    • Provide a feature to allow the manual disabling of GameShield on the application side.
    Forwarding node If multiple services share a forwarding node and the forwarding node is attacked, you cannot identify the specific service that causes the attack. Therefore, operations cannot be performed on the specific service to handle the attack. The services that share a forwarding node affect each other.
    • We recommend that you connect different applications to different instances and deploy a forwarding node for each application.
    • If multiple applications share a forwarding node, we recommend that you perform the following operations:
      • Increase bandwidth based on your business needs. The system automatically configures one defense node for each additional clean bandwidth of 10 Mbit/s.
      • Assign nodes to services based on the service scale. This ensures that users are evenly distributed among nodes if possible.
  • Clean bandwidth

    The 95th percentile bandwidth billing method is applied. You are billed by calendar month based on the bandwidth that you use to protect services.

    When the 95th percentile bandwidth billing method is applied, you are billed by the calendar month based on the running durations of GameShield instances. In a calendar month, GameShield collects peak bandwidth values every five minutes. These values are sorted in descending order. The top 5% peak bandwidth values are ignored when the total prices are calculated. You are billed based on the largest peak bandwidth value among the remaining 95% peak bandwidth values.

    For example, in a calendar month (30 days), each peak bandwidth value that GameShield collects is valid by default. In this case, 12 peak bandwidth values are collected each hour. The number of peak bandwidth values that are collected in each calendar month is calculated as follows: 12 × 24 × 30 = 8,640. You can sort these peak bandwidth values in descending order. A total of 432 (8,640 × 5%) values are ignored. You are billed based on the 433th bandwidth value.