Pick a region and size

Game servers feel best when players are close to them. For players in the Philippines that usually means Singapore, Malaysia, Jakarta, Hong Kong or Tokyo. Measure from where your players are with the ping tester rather than trusting anyone’s ping claims, ours included.

The sizes are estimates to start from, not measured results. Watch CPU and memory once players join and resize if needed.

Minecraft with Paper

1. Install the Java version Paper needs for your Minecraft version (Java 25 for Paper 26.1+, Java 21 for 1.20.5 to 1.21.11). Paper’s docs recommend a current JDK build such as Eclipse Temurin.
2. Download the Paper build for your version from papermc.io into an empty folder.
3. Start it once, accept the Minecraft EULA by setting eula=true in eula.txt, then start it again.
4. Allow the game port (25565/TCP by default) in your firewall and in your provider’s cloud firewall.

java -Xms4G -Xmx4G -jar paper.jar --nogui

Set -Xms and -Xmx to the memory you want Minecraft to use, leaving some RAM for the operating system. Run it inside screen, tmux or a systemd service so it keeps running after you log out.

FiveM

FiveM servers need a free licence key from the Cfx.re portal. Cfx.re calls the Linux server a courtesy port, so check its docs if something behaves differently from Windows.

1. Install xz-utils and git.
2. Download the recommended Linux server build from the Cfx.re artifacts page into ~/FXServer/server and extract it.
3. Clone the default server data, then create server.cfg with your licence key.
4. Start the server from the server-data folder.

mkdir -p ~/FXServer/server && cd ~/FXServer/server
# download fx.tar.xz (recommended build) from the Cfx.re artifacts page, then:
tar xf fx.tar.xz
git clone https://github.com/citizenfx/cfx-server-data.git ~/FXServer/server-data
cd ~/FXServer/server-data
bash ~/FXServer/server/run.sh +exec server.cfg

Open port 30120 for both TCP and UDP. The default configuration allows 48 player slots with OneSync.

Learning with rAthena

rAthena is a good way to learn C++ builds, MySQL and how game servers split work between login, character and map servers. On Debian or Ubuntu, the rAthena wiki lists these steps:

sudo apt-get install git make libmariadb-dev libmariadbclient-dev libmariadbclient-dev-compat gcc g++ zlib1g-dev libpcre3-dev
git clone https://github.com/rathena/rathena.git ~/rAthena
cd ~/rAthena
./configure
make clean && make server
./athena-start start

Before starting, create a MariaDB or MySQL database and user, import the SQL files from sql-files/ and set the connection details, as the rAthena wiki explains. Package names change between releases; if one is missing, check the wiki page for your OS.

Optional: TCP BBR

BBR is a TCP congestion-control method in modern Linux kernels. It can help throughput for downloads and web traffic on long or lossy routes. It does not change the distance to your players and does not affect UDP traffic, which many games use, so treat it as optional and not as a ping fix.

echo "net.core.default_qdisc=fq" | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.d/99-bbr.conf
echo "net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control=bbr" | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.d/99-bbr.conf
sudo sysctl --system
sysctl net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control

Where to host

• Hostinger KVM: KVM 2 (2 vCPU, 8 GB) or KVM 4 (4 vCPU, 16 GB) in Malaysia or Indonesia, priced in pesos with GCash listed.
• Vultr: High Performance plans from $6/mo in Singapore, Tokyo, Osaka or Seoul, billed by usage.

Sources (checked 13 Nov 2026): Paper Java requirements, Paper getting started, FiveM server setup, rAthena wiki.