Blog
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2 years to build a game, 3 days to add multiplayer
Solo developer Matt Van Alstyne took Mutant Mayhem from single-player to a 4-player match in three days with Reactor, then began moving to server authority without a rewrite.
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Multiplayer Network Topologies: How to Choose
Dedicated server, listen server, peer-to-peer, relay, or a plain web backend: how each multiplayer topology works, which games they fit, and the constraints that make the choice for you.
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How We Synced 5,000 Enemies in a Multiplayer Survivors Game
A multiplayer survivors-like with 5,000 to 6,000 networked enemies, built in a week on Reactor. The numbers behind syncing that many server-authoritative entities at 50 to 70 KB/s with no network LOD.
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Why Multiplayer Physics Breaks at Scale
Syncing ten players is easy. Syncing thousands of physics objects is a different problem, and underneath it is a bandwidth problem. Here is where the cost comes from and what brings it down.
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How Much Does It Cost to Build and Run an Online Multiplayer Game? Part 2: Build vs Buy
Taking the roll-your-own cost from part one and comparing it to managed multiplayer services, Photon, Coherence, and Reactor: where buying wins, where building does, and why labor decides it for most teams.
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How Much Does It Cost to Build and Run an Online Multiplayer Game? Part 1: Rolling Your Own
A practical, vendor-neutral method to estimate the real monthly cost of building and running your own multiplayer backend: bandwidth, compute, backend services, and the labor to build and maintain it.
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Reactor vs Photon Fusion 2 vs Coherence: A Unity Multiplayer Comparison
A technical comparison of Reactor, Photon Fusion 2, and Coherence for Unity multiplayer development: server authority, bandwidth efficiency, hosting costs, and complexity at scale.
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Why Is My Multiplayer Bandwidth Cost So High?
Your engine is already compressing your transforms. The 12-20 bytes you are paying per networked entity is the floor, not a misconfiguration. Here is where the cost comes from and how to go lower.
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Why We Built Reactor: What Unity Multiplayer Was Missing
Ten years of building a Unity multiplayer engine for physics simulation, large crowds, and games other tools can't handle. How Reactor compares to Photon, NGO, and Mirror.
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Case Study: Synty Studios Builds Every Asset Pack with Scene Fusion
Nearly a decade of remote level collaboration at one of the Unity Asset Store's most prolific studios. We asked Synty how they work, what changed, and what they'd tell other studios.
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Unity Multiplayer Engines Compared: Reactor, Photon Fusion, NGO, Mirror, and Coherence
A practical comparison of Unity multiplayer networking solutions in 2026. Which engine fits your game type, team size, and hosting situation, and where each one falls short.
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Synty Studios on Scene Fusion: Days of Work Compressed to Hours
Synty Studios published a walkthrough of how they use Scene Fusion for remote collaboration across every stage of asset pack production.
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Reactor 1.0
After six years powering our own games and partner projects, Reactor is available for general release.
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Case Study: Braains2, 10x the Data, 8x Less Bandwidth
How braains.io developer Jayun Noe used Reactor and Scene Fusion to double the player count, double the update rate, and cut bandwidth costs to 1/10th of the original game.
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The Economics of Web-based Multiplayer Games
We built kazap.io alongside Reactor to understand the economics of .io games. Here's what we learned about bandwidth costs, ad revenue, and why only the most viral games win.