Deploy a Low‑Cost Palworld Private Server on Alibaba Cloud Serverless K8s (ACS)

Background

Palworld is a popular open‑world survival game that quickly surpassed 7 million sales and reached over 2 million concurrent players on Steam. The official server limits groups to four players, but Pocketpair offers a private‑server solution that can be run on a cloud platform.

Alibaba Cloud Container Compute Service (ACS)

ACS provides a serverless Kubernetes interface where users do not manage nodes. It supports standard K8s resources (ConfigMap, Secret, Service, Deployment, PVC) and offers pay‑as‑you‑go billing for compute, networking, and storage.

Step‑by‑Step Deployment

Create an ACS cluster via the console and enable “Expose API Server with EIP”.

Obtain the kubeconfig from the cluster details page or use CloudShell.

Deploy the Palworld namespace and resources using kubectl commands.

kubectl create ns palworld

apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: palworld-cm
  namespace: palworld
data:
  PUID: "1000"
  PGID: "1000"
  PORT: "8211"
  PLAYERS: "16"
  SERVER_PASSWORD: "worldofpals"
  MULTITHREADING: "true"
  RCON_ENABLED: "true"
  RCON_PORT: "25575"
  TZ: UTC
  COMMUNITY: "false"
  SERVER_DESCRIPTION: ""
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: palworld-secrets
  namespace: palworld
type: Opaque
stringData:
  rconPassword: yourRconPassword
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: palworld-server
  namespace: palworld
  labels:
    app: palworld-server
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  selector:
    app: palworld-server
  ports:
  - name: server
    port: 8211
    protocol: UDP
    targetPort: server
  - name: query
    port: 27015
    protocol: UDP
    targetPort: query
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: palworld-server
  namespace: palworld
  labels:
    app: palworld-server
    alibabacloud.com/instance-type: standard
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: palworld-server
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: palworld-server
        alibabacloud.com/instance-type: standard
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: palworld-server
        image: thijsvanloef/palworld-server-docker
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
        resources:
          limits:
            cpu: "4"
            memory: 16Gi
          requests:
            cpu: "4"
            memory: 16Gi
        ports:
        - containerPort: 8211
          name: server
          protocol: UDP
        - containerPort: 27015
          name: query
          protocol: UDP
        env:
        - name: ADMIN_PASSWORD
          valueFrom:
            secretKeyRef:
              name: palworld-secrets
              key: rconPassword
        envFrom:
        - configMapRef:
            name: palworld-cm
        volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /palworld
          name: datadir
      volumes:
      - name: datadir
        persistentVolumeClaim:
          claimName: palworld-nas
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: palworld-nas
  namespace: palworld
spec:
  accessModes:
  - ReadWriteMany
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 10Pi
  storageClassName: alicloud-nas

The deployment creates the required ConfigMap, Secret, LoadBalancer Service, Deployment, and a PVC using the alicloud-nas storage class.

Cost‑Saving Strategies

ACS’s serverless model eliminates node‑level fragmentation; users pay only for resources actually consumed. By scaling the Deployment replica count to zero when no players are online, compute charges stop, while the LoadBalancer and NAS incur minimal or no cost.

For workloads that do not need strict SLA, ACS offers a “best‑effort” instance type (label alibabacloud.com/instance-type: best-effort) that reduces CPU pricing at the expense of possible throttling.

Further Considerations

Task‑type instances have a 24‑hour runtime limit during the beta period.

For production use, package the YAML as a Helm chart.

Reference the community Helm chart and OpenKruiseGame for advanced game‑server orchestration.