Case Study: Uken Games achieves scalable global performance and faster issue resolution with New Relic

Canadian gaming company Uken counts on New Relic performance analytics to help build global gaming business

Uken is a Toronto-based cross-platform game developer (founded in 2009) whose mobile and browser titles—such as Forces Of War, Crime Inc., and Mighty Monsters—have been downloaded over 20 million times and generate about 800 million requests per month. With thick-client games, a global player base, and a dozen shared backend services, Uken struggled to diagnose performance problems and relied on manual tools and small Rails plugins that slowed troubleshooting and impeded consistent user experience worldwide.

After a quick Ruby gem install, New Relic’s SaaS dashboard gave Uken a single view into Apdex scores, transaction traces, slow SQL, and CDN issues so the team can drill from overview to specific servers or transactions and detect problems before players notice. The result: more efficient operations (scaling from 2 people/1 server to 30+ people and 70+ servers with only one sysadmin and a half-time DevOps), faster root-cause resolution, weekly safe deployments, and a more proactive, metrics-driven approach to ensuring a consistent global gaming experience.

Uken Games

Mark Lampert

Co-Founder