Hot Wheels id.
Mattel engage Code Wizards to migrate LiveOps platform
Challenge
Mattel needed a gametech professional services partner to migrate Hot Wheels id from GameSparks, which was being deprecated, to a new LiveOps platform. This posed a significant threat to the ongoing existence of their game and apps. With limited time and resources, it was crucial for Mattel to find a reliable and competent partner of backend experts who could ensure the seamless transition of their property onto a new platform.
Why Us
Choosing the right migration partner is crucial for any game developer, especially when faced with a sudden shutdown of their current platform. It’s important to find a reliable and competent partner who can ensure a seamless transition, minimising the impact on players.
Code Wizards are trusted tech partners of multiple backend/liveops suppliers, meaning we are as platform- and tech-agnostic as possible, making the right recommendation for the game, not our wallets.
Our reputation within the industry, especially in supporting partners who are not native to the games industry, helped Mattel make the decision to bring us on board, and provided a layer of reassurance and reduction of risk throughout the project.
Solution
We ported server-side code to Nakama, leveraging our Shim translation layer to reuse the GameSparks code, ensuring compatibility within Nakama. This streamlined the testing process for the same code, rather than necessitating a complete rewrite of code for a new platform.
The migration was completed in two steps – a gradual trickle migration, which allowed for zero downtime – a huge boost for the Hot Wheels id community, maximising their playtime and keeping player retention levels high. We tested it with a subset of users and once everything was confirmed as working, we performed a Big Bang Migration! This entailed migrating all of the data from GameSparks to Nakama.
Huge migration, zero downtime. All thanks to the bespoke migration tools developed by Code Wizards’ battle-hardened engineers.
Outcome
Hot Wheels id was kept alive! We reduced the amount of testing that was needed by keeping the same code; with the added benefit of anyone who had been working on the code pre-migration would still be familiar with it after we completed our work.
We continued to support the game, providing LiveOps support, reporting, troubleshooting, ticket escalation etc, until the game’s sunsetting in early 2024.
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