PlayDeck

PlayDeck — High-Load Real-Time Gaming Infrastructure on Kubernetes How we built a scalable, production-ready backend for one of the fastest-growing gaming ecosystems on Telegram. PlayDeck required a backend platform capable of supporting real-time interactions for millions of users across Telegram mini-games, bots, payment flows, and in-chat experiences. The challenge was to deliver an enterprise-grade architecture with startup-level agility — ready for unpredictable traffic spikes, strict uptime requirements, and rapid feature delivery.

Challenge

PlayDeck's platform needed to handle: • Thousands of concurrent players across distributed game sessions • Real-time communication between bots, users, and backend services • High-frequency writes for payments, achievements, leaderboards, and game events • Horizontal scaling without downtime • A developer toolkit enabling easy onboarding and monetization for game developers • Deep integration with Telegram's ecosystem (Bot API, Stars, TON payments, inline games) The system had to deliver sub-200ms latency, maintain stability under fluctuating traffic, and provide a foundation for long-term growth — without accumulating technical debt.

Solution

H-Studio designed and implemented the complete backend architecture — from system design and dataflow engineering to Kubernetes deployment, CI/CD pipelines, and observability. Microservices Architecture We decomposed the platform into isolated domain services: • User Service — authentication, profiles, sessions • Game Catalog Service — indexing, search, recommendations • Leaderboard Service — real-time ranking and aggregation • Payments Service — TON and Stars payment workflows • Notification Service — push events, engagement, reminders • Bot Gateway — secure channel between Telegram Bots and backend Each service runs in a containerized environment with autoscaling, load balancing, centralized logs, and isolated failure domains. Kubernetes & Cloud Platform The platform runs on a production-ready Kubernetes cluster with: • Horizontal and vertical autoscaling • Zero-downtime rolling deployments • Service mesh–based communication • Secure API boundaries • Centralized monitoring and tracing Real-Time Event Processing For real-time state changes across games, bots, and users: • Apache Kafka handles event streaming • Redis powers caching, leaderboards, and delayed jobs • ClickHouse stores analytics and high-volume events This ensures low latency, predictable throughput, and high resilience. CI/CD & GitOps We implemented end-to-end CI/CD automation: • GitHub Actions pipelines • Automated build/test/deploy workflows • Security scanning and policy enforcement • Environment promotion (dev → stage → prod) • ArgoCD for GitOps-based deployments • Zero manual configuration changes Observability & Reliability We deployed a full observability stack: • Grafana dashboards • Prometheus metrics and alerts • Loki for logs • Distributed tracing for debugging • Slack-based alerting pipeline This transformed operations from reactive to proactive. Security The architecture includes: • Encrypted service-to-service communication • API gateway with authentication and rate limiting • Automated security tests in CI/CD • Secrets management and auditability

Results

• Thousands of concurrent players supported in real time
• Sub-200ms response times under peak load
• Zero-downtime deployments through fully automated CI/CD
• Horizontally scalable microservices architecture
• Complete observability and faster incident resolution
• Developer onboarding and monetization tools integrated into the platform

Tech Stack

Key Insights

• Real-time, high-load systems require event-driven design from day one. • Kubernetes + GitOps dramatically reduces operational overhead. • Modular microservices enable scaling without architectural rewrites. • Enterprise-grade infrastructure is achievable even for fast-moving startups. • Automation (CI/CD, monitoring, observability) is the foundation for platform reliability.