Case Study: Square Enix accelerates screenshot processing and cuts costs with AWS Lambda

Square Enix - Customer Case Study

Square Enix, the game publisher behind titles like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, needed a way to handle massive spikes in screenshot processing for Dragon Quest X. During peak events, especially around New Year’s Eve, thousands of in-game screenshots per minute were uploaded and processed sequentially, causing delays of several hours before customers could view them.

To solve this, Square Enix used AWS Lambda with Amazon S3 and Amazon SQS to trigger and automate image processing in the cloud while integrating with on-premises systems. AWS Lambda cut processing time from several hours to a little over 10 seconds and reduced costs to about one twentieth of the on-premises approach, while also eliminating resource bottlenecks and reducing infrastructure and labor overhead.

Square Enix

Daisuke Agata

Technical Director, Business Division No. 6