this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2026
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What are my best options for hosting classic game servers in 2026? (fedia.io)
submitted 1 week ago by mrmaplebar@fedia.io to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I've been increasingly getting into the idea of hosting some servers for classic PC games like Counter Strike 1.6 and various Half-Life mods, but I'm curious what the consensus is for what the best options are for doing so right now.

I have some experience hosting servers at home in a "homelab" kind of context (mostly for stuff like Jellyfin, Samba, etc.), and I know how to spin up docker containers and administer a Linux computer decently for LAN use. Right now I use tailscale to access my homelab stuff remotely, but I don't know if that would work well in the context of hosting a public game server.

Generally I don't have much knowledge about safely exposing my local hardware to the wider internet for my circle of ~20 friends to join.

So basically I'm wondering what you all would do for hosting game servers if you were going to start today...

Would you use local hardware with port forwarding? Or would you go with a VPS (and if so, can you recommend one for North America)?

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[–] moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 17 points 1 week ago

Tailscale works great, but their free tier is limited to a total of 8 users, which is enough for a tiny minecraft server, but doesn't seem to be enough for your usecase.

For 10-15+ users, you probably want to self host a VPN on your own VPS. Like, you can self host headscale, which is tailscale but self hosted. : https://github.com/juanfont/headscale [1]

I wouldn't port forward game servers, because they often lack authentication (login and stuff), and then they also have security issues due to not receiving updates. If your game server isn't truly public, then it's easier to just have people use the tailscale client to connect to your VPN.

[1] Although I would recommend headscale to OP for it's simplicity, it is very barebones, and software like netbird or netmaker is more close to a truly self hosted tailscale, with things like more advanced accounts, OIDC integration, authorization, and so on. But they are more annoying to host and set up.