Game Server Retirement & Decommission Guide

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Game Server Retirement & Decommission Guide
Safe Shutdown, Archival & Cleanup
This guide may be updated as GGU policies, procedures, platforms, and organizational needs change.

Use this guide when permanently retiring a GGU game server or replacing it with a new service.

 

Before Shutdown

• Confirm retirement approval.
• Identify data that must be retained.
• Back up configuration, databases, maps, plugins, and custom content as appropriate.
• Document any reusable custom work.
• Announce retirement if the community is affected.
• Identify integrations that reference the server.

 

Decommission

• Stop the service.
• Remove public server listings.
• Remove obsolete monitoring and scheduled jobs.
• Remove unused DNS records and port mappings where applicable.
• Revoke server-specific credentials and tokens.
• Archive repositories/configuration rather than deleting useful history.

 

After Retirement

• Verify no automation continues targeting the retired service.
• Update documentation.
• Transfer reusable assets to the replacement project if applicable.
• Record where backups/archives are stored and how long they should be retained.

 

Change Control

• Know what you are changing and why.
• Back up or ensure a rollback path for high-impact changes.
• Avoid combining unrelated changes.
• Record material production changes.
• Test before production when practical.

 

Validation

• Confirm the service starts successfully.
• Review logs for new errors.
• Test the exact behavior changed.
• Confirm permissions and integrations still work.
• Monitor briefly after deployment for delayed failures.

 

Escalation

If a change affects systems outside your responsibility, creates a security concern, or cannot be safely reversed, stop and escalate rather than continuing to experiment in production.

 

Retention Decisions

Before deletion, decide which logs, databases, custom content, player data, and configuration must be retained for operational, historical, or policy reasons.

 

Dependency Audit

• DNS
• Monitoring
• Discord status messages
• Server directory entries
• Bots
• Scheduled jobs
• Backups
• Stats systems
• SourceBans or moderation integrations

 

Prerequisites

• Confirm you are authorized to make the change.
• Confirm the target system/server/repository.
• Read current project or service documentation.
• Identify the expected result.
• Identify a rollback or recovery path for high-impact work.

 

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Copying commands or values from a different server without checking context.
• Making several unrelated changes before testing.
• Ignoring warnings because the service still appears to start.
• Editing production directly when a safer test or review path exists.
• Deleting old files or backups before the replacement is verified.
• Treating permissions errors as a reason to grant broad administrator access.
• Failing to record what changed.

 

Operational Record

For material changes, record enough information for another administrator to understand the target, change, reason, result, and rollback point. This may be a ticket, issue, pull request, deployment note, incident record, or appropriate Leadership message.

 

If Something Goes Wrong

1. Stop making unrelated changes.
2. Preserve the current logs and error output.
3. Determine whether immediate rollback is safer than continued troubleshooting.
4. Restore the last known-good state where practical.
5. Escalate with the exact error, target service, recent changes, and reproduction steps.
6. After recovery, document the cause and any preventative follow-up.

 

Retire services cleanly so they do not leave hidden dependencies behind.