Game server glossary

A2S (Steam server query)

Also: A2S_INFO, A2S_PLAYER, Source query, Steam query

Valve's UDP server query protocol, used by the Steam server browser and most Source, Unity and Unreal game servers. A2S_INFO returns name, map, players and max players; A2S_PLAYER returns the player list.

ServerStats basic mode uses A2S (and each game's own protocol where it differs) to read player count, map, version and response time.

Agent

Also: ServerStats plugin, ServerStats mod, ServerStats resource

The small ServerStats plugin, mod or resource installed on a game server. It records metrics and events, and sends them out over HTTPS in signed batches; it opens no ports.

Each agent generates its own Ed25519 key on first start and is enrolled with a one-time claim code. It buffers to disk if ServerStats is unreachable and reports its own main-thread cost.

Alt funnel

Also: alt farming, funnel into one account, alt account funnel

Several accounts, usually new ones with little playtime, sending money or items to one main account. It is the usual way alts are used to farm starter money, daily rewards or vote rewards.

It can be spotted from the payments log alone, without IP addresses: count the distinct payers into one account over a day and check how new they are. ServerStats raises it as abuse flag F2.

ARPPU (average revenue per paying user)

Also: average revenue per paying user

Net store revenue in a period divided by the number of players who paid in that period.

A high ARPPU with a low paying share means a few big spenders carry the store.

ARPU (average revenue per user)

Also: average revenue per user, revenue per player

Net store revenue in a period divided by all active players in that period, whether they paid or not.

ServerStats counts anyone with a session in the range as active. ARPU tells you what an average player is worth; ARPPU tells you what a payer is worth.

Basic mode

Also: no-install mode, query mode

ServerStats tracking with nothing installed on the server: it polls the public query port that server browsers already use, every 60 seconds while the server is online.

It records player count, max players, map, name and version, uptime and response time. Ownership is verified by putting a short token in the server name or MOTD once. Installing the agent later keeps the same server and its history.

CCU (concurrent users)

Also: concurrent players, players online, CCU

The number of players connected at the same moment. It's what a server browser shows and what your slot count limits.

CCU says how busy a server feels; unique players say how many people it serves. Both matter.

Churn

Also: player churn, churn rate

Players who stop coming back. Churn rate is the share of a group of active players who don't return within a set period.

Churn is the other side of retention: a server that keeps its D30 retention while growing new players has low churn.

Churn risk

Also: churn score, at-risk players

A per-player score from 0 to 100 estimating how likely a regular is to stop playing. ServerStats scores it from how long the player has been away against their own usual gap between sessions, their playtime trend and their spending.

70 and above is high risk, 40 and above medium. Churn risk, the at-risk list and churn-risk alerts are on the Operator and Network plans.

Claim code

Also: enrolment code, SS code

A one-time code (SS-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX) from the ServerStats dashboard that links an agent to your account. It is valid for 30 minutes and works once.

The agent sends only its public key with the code; ServerStats never holds anything that could sign for your server. To move a server or replace a leaked key, claim again with a new code.

Cohort

Also: retention cohort, weekly cohort

A group of players who started in the same period, followed over time. ServerStats groups new players by the week (Monday, UTC) of their first session and shows how many return in each following week.

Comparing cohorts shows whether an update, a wipe or an ad campaign brought players who stayed.

Conversion rate

Also: paying share, first-purchase conversion, payer conversion

The share of players who make a purchase. For a game server store, usually the share of new or active players who buy anything at all.

Most servers convert a small minority of players; the trend after a store or pricing change matters more than the absolute number.

DAU/MAU

Also: DAU, MAU, stickiness, daily active users, monthly active users

Daily active players divided by monthly active players. It measures how often your regulars come back: 0.5 means the average monthly player plays about every other day.

It's a stickiness measure, not a size measure, so a small server can beat a big one.

Event log (log explorer)

Also: payments log, money log, punishments log, log explorer

A searchable list of individual in-game events such as payments between players, shop and auction sales, trades, punishments, votes and crate openings, each with the players involved, the amount and the plugin it came from.

In ServerStats the log explorer filters by player, counterparty, amount, currency, plugin and time, on every plan as far back as the plan's history (24 hours on Free, 90 days on Operator, 2 years on Network). Players show as pseudonymous handles unless names are turned on.

Frame time

Also: tick time, server frame time

How long one server frame or tick takes, in milliseconds. It is the inverse of FPS or tick rate: 60 FPS is about 16.7 ms per frame, 30 FPS about 33 ms.

Averages hide spikes, so frame time is best read as a distribution (median, p95, worst) against the game's budget.

GC pause

Also: garbage collection pause, GC spike, stop-the-world

A pause while the runtime's garbage collector reclaims memory. On Java (Minecraft) and .NET or Mono (Rust, CS2 plugins) servers, a long pause stalls the game thread and shows up as a lag spike with no plugin to blame.

Frequent long pauses usually mean too little heap, poor GC settings, or a plugin allocating heavily every tick.

Hitch (FiveM)

Also: hitch warning, server thread hitch warning

FXServer's name for a moment when one of its threads was stuck far longer than normal, logged as 'server thread hitch warning: timer interval of X milliseconds'.

The server thread (svMain) runs every server script, so a server hitch usually means a resource did heavy work in one go. Sync and network thread hitches point at OneSync entity load or networking instead.

Lag spike

Also: lag spike, hitch, frame spike

A single tick or frame that takes far longer than the game's budget, felt by every player at once as a freeze or rubber-band. It can happen on a server whose average TPS or FPS looks healthy.

ServerStats records a lag spike when one tick passes a per-game threshold (for example 100 ms on Paper, 250 ms by default on Rust, 50 ms on CS2) and, where the game allows, names the plugin, resource, hook or engine phase that took the time.

LTV (lifetime value)

Also: lifetime value, player LTV, customer lifetime value

The total a player has spent on your store over their whole time on the server, net of refunds and chargebacks.

Averaged over a group, such as everyone who first joined through one address or campaign, LTV tells you which sources bring players worth acquiring.

Money sink and money source

Also: sink, source, faucet, money faucet, money sink

A money source (or faucet) creates currency: sell shops, jobs, salaries, vote rewards, admin gives. A money sink removes it: server shops, taxes, fees, fines, repairs. Payments between players are neither; they only move money.

An economy stays stable when sinks roughly keep up with sources. If a source runs far ahead, the money supply inflates. Charting created against removed money by cause shows which shop price or job pays out too much.

Money supply

Also: total money, economy size, in-game inflation

The total amount of in-game currency held by all players on a server at one time. When it grows faster than the player count, prices rise and money buys less: in-game inflation.

It is read by summing balances (on Minecraft through Vault, on FiveM from the framework's accounts). The share held by the richest players shows whether a few accounts own the economy. ServerStats also uses it to scale abuse thresholds, so a 'large transfer' means the same on a small SMP and on a big network.

MSPT (milliseconds per tick)

Also: milliseconds per tick, tick time

How long each server tick takes to run, in milliseconds. On Minecraft, anything under 50 ms keeps 20 TPS; above 50 ms the server falls behind and TPS drops.

MSPT shows how much headroom is left before players notice lag, and its maximum shows short spikes that a 1-minute TPS average hides. Paper shows it with /mspt; spark shows it with /spark tps.

Packet loss

Also: loss, choke

The share of network packets between a player and the server that never arrive. Even 1–2% loss causes rubber-banding and missed hits in fast games.

Loss usually comes from the player's connection or a route between them and the server, not the server's CPU. Where the game reports it (for example CS:Source), ServerStats records it per player.

Peak players

Also: peak CCU, peak concurrent

The highest number of players online at once in a period, such as a day, a week or a wipe.

Peaks show when to schedule events and restarts, and whether you're hitting your slot limit.

Ping

Also: latency, RTT, round-trip time

The round-trip time between a player and the server, in milliseconds. High ping delays everything a player does; it's a network problem, not a server-performance one.

In ServerStats basic mode, the 'response time' shown is ServerStats's own query round trip to the server, not your players' ping. Player ping comes from an agent.

Pseudonymous player ID

Also: player handle, keyed hash, pid

The ID ServerStats uses for a player in analytics: a keyed hash (HMAC-SHA256) of their platform ID, with a key unique to your account, shown as a handle such as #a91f3c.

The same player can't be linked across different owners' accounts. The original ID is stored encrypted with your account's key so you can look players up and moderate them; it is never shown in the dashboard or API.

Query port

Also: Steam query port, server query port

The port a game server answers server-browser queries on: name, map, player count. It is often the game port or the game port plus one, but varies by game (Rust uses a separate port, Valheim uses game port + 1).

Basic mode reads this port to track a server with nothing installed. If the query port is firewalled or disabled, server browsers and basic mode can't see the server.

resmon (FiveM)

Also: resource monitor

FiveM's client-side resource monitor (resmon 1 in the F8 console), showing CPU time and memory for each resource running on your own game client.

It does not show server-side cost. For that, use the FXServer console's profiler: profiler record, then profiler view or profiler saveJSON.

Retention (D1, D7, D30)

Also: D1 retention, D7 retention, D30 retention, day-1 retention, player retention

The share of new players who come back: D1 is the share who return the day after their first session, D7 a week later and D30 a month later.

ServerStats counts a player as retained on day n if they start a session n to n+1 days after their first, among new players whose first session is at least n+1 days old, so recent players never drag the rate down.

Server FPS

Also: server framerate, server frame rate

How many simulation frames a game server completes per second, as opposed to the frames a player's PC renders. Used as the main health number by Rust, Palworld, DayZ, Arma Reforger and other Unity and Unreal-based servers.

Low server FPS is felt as desync, rubber-banding and delayed hits, not as a choppy picture. In Rust it is capped by fps.limit and usually falls as entity count grows over a wipe.

Session length

Also: session duration, average session, playtime per session

How long a player stays from joining to leaving. Average and median session length show how engaging a server is once people are in.

The median is usually more honest than the average, which a few all-day AFK players can inflate.

Sidecar

Also: ServerStats sidecar

A separate ServerStats program that runs next to the game server on the same machine, for games where a mod can't sign and send data itself. It reads the game's local REST API, a log, or a spool file written by a small ServerStats mod, and sends the data.

It's used for games such as Palworld, Project Zomboid, Squad, Terraria and the SourceMod games (TF2, CS:Source, Left 4 Dead 2).

Sim speed (Space Engineers)

Also: simulation speed, sim speed, simulation ratio

Space Engineers' measure of how fast the server simulates compared with real time. 1.0 means real time (60 updates a second); 0.5 means the world runs at half speed.

Sim speed falls as grids, blocks and physics grow. ServerStats records it every second, averaged per 10 seconds, along with the lowest value in each window.

spark

Also: spark profiler

The standard performance profiler for Minecraft Java servers, bundled with Paper since 1.21. /spark tps, /spark health and /spark profiler show tick times, server health and where the main thread spends its time.

Paper deprecated its older Timings system in favour of spark. Use /spark profiler start --only-ticks-over 100 to profile only the slow ticks.

Staff self-dealing

Also: admin abuse, staff abuse, kickback

A staff member using admin powers for their own benefit: giving money or spawning items to themselves, or to a player who pays part of it back soon after.

Logging admin gives separately from player payments, with the staff member attached, makes it visible. ServerStats raises it as abuse flag F5, and a punishment revoked for a player who recently paid the staff member as F10.

Tick rate

Also: tickrate, server tick, 64 tick, 128 tick

How many times per second a server simulates the game world and processes player input. CS2 runs at 64 tick, TF2 and Garry's Mod default to 66, Left 4 Dead 2 to 30, Minecraft to 20.

The inverse is the per-tick budget: 15.625 ms at 64 tick, 50 ms at 20. Source 1 servers set it with the -tickrate launch option where the game supports it; CS2 has no supported way to change it and uses sub-tick input timestamps instead.

TPS (ticks per second)

Also: ticks per second, server TPS

How many game ticks a server actually completed in the last second. Minecraft targets 20 TPS (a 50 ms budget per tick) and never runs faster; Hytale targets 30 TPS (about 33 ms per tick).

Because TPS is capped at its target, a server can show a perfect 20 while each tick takes 49 ms. It only drops once ticks run over budget, so MSPT is the earlier warning.

Transfer ring

Also: money ring, payment cycle, circular transfers

Money that goes round a small group of players and comes back to where it started, such as A pays B, B pays C and C pays A within a few hours.

Rings are used to make duped or farmed money look like normal trade. ServerStats raises cycles of 2 to 4 players within 72 hours as abuse flag F3, and across your own servers on the Network plan.

Uptime

Also: availability, uptime percentage

The share of time a server was online and answering. 99.9% over 30 days allows about 43 minutes of downtime.

ServerStats measures it from its own readings of the server (the agent's heartbeat, or the query port in basic mode), so planned restarts count as downtime too.

Wash trading

Also: fake sales, price laundering

Two players buying and selling items between themselves at absurd prices, such as one dirt block for $250,000, to move money through an auction house or player shop so that it looks like a sale.

The tell is repeated sales between the same pair at many times the item's usual price. ServerStats raises it as abuse flag F7.

Whale

Also: top spender, big spender

A player who accounts for a large share of a server's store revenue. On many servers a handful of whales carry most of the income.

Losing one quietly can cut monthly revenue noticeably. ServerStats's whale-left alert (Network plan) fires when a top spender hasn't played for a set number of days.

Wipe

Also: map wipe, blueprint wipe, BP wipe, forced wipe

Resetting a survival server's world so everyone starts again. In Rust a map wipe clears all bases and items; a blueprint wipe also resets what players have learned.

Rust has a forced monthly wipe, and many servers also wipe weekly or bi-weekly. Wipe day is usually the peak of the cycle, and entity count, server FPS and player numbers all move with wipe age.