#53 – Felix Oechsler: What Happens When a Game Succeeds and the Studio Isn’t Ready

What really happens when your game suddenly explodes to hundreds of thousands of players?

Today, I sit down with Felix Oechsler, CTO and Managing Director at Nitrado, to unpack the brutal realities of launching and scaling multiplayer games. From Last Epoch’s massive launch to DDoS attacks, server costs, hyperscalers vs bare metal, and why most studios get infrastructure decisions wrong far too late.

This episode is essential viewing for indie developers, studio leads, and anyone building multiplayer games who want to avoid costly launch disasters, downtime, and player frustration. We go deep into real-world war stories, backend failures, scaling strategies, and why infrastructure decisions should be made way earlier than most developers think.

If you’re preparing for success or already feeling the pain of scale, this episode will save you time, money, and regret.

Connect with Felix:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/felix-oechsler-05589192/
Website: https://gamefabric.com/

Connect with Harry:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hphokou/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@hphokou
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hphokou

Join our industry events: https://hivemind.world/
Never run out of LinkedIn content ideas again: https://idea.phokou.com/c/system

Get exclusive podcast recaps & industry insights:
→ Subscribe to The Gaming Playbook Weekly at thegamingplaybook.com

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:19 What GameFabric is and why it exists
04:02 What happens when a game unexpectedly blows up
06:46 When developers should start thinking about infrastructure
08:38 Load testing mistakes studios keep making
09:55 Backend services developers forget to scale
11:01 Hidden infrastructure failures (logging, monitoring, costs)
13:16 Should developers even make multiplayer games anymore?
17:17 Hyperscalers vs bare metal: real cost breakdown
21:54 Why gaming-optimized infrastructure matters
24:07 What a DDoS attack actually is (plain English)
30:04 Is DDoS actually solvable?
34:11 Queues, lag, and why Fortnite does it right
37:17 Is there a limit to players on one server?
40:00 What makes a platform truly developer-focused?
44:08 Should studios build infrastructure in-house?
48:03 Career lessons going from engineer to CTO
50:38 Focus, leadership, and avoiding burnout
55:14 Trust, delegation, and scaling teams
58:32 Games Felix is playing right now
59:11 How to connect with Felix