Game servers built by many hands.
Varde lets your friend group co-host game servers. Saves replicate across everyone's machines, hosting fails over automatically, and every player connects to the same stable address — no rented servers, no port forwarding.
Available for Windows, macOS, and Linux · grendalaget/varde
How it works
Varde turns your group's own PCs into a resilient hosting collective. A cairn belongs to no one — and neither does your server.
Peer-hosted by the group
One member's PC hosts at a time — the lit stone in the cairn. Anyone in the group can take over; no rented hardware required to play.
Replicated snapshots
Saves are deduplicated, content-addressed snapshots replicated across the group's machines. Stop mid-raid on one PC, resume on another.
Automatic failover
When the host goes offline, Varde hands the server to another member's machine and the ember moves to a new stone. Players reconnect to the same save.
Stable loopback addresses
Every server gets a stable 127.77.x.y address on each player's own machine. Bookmark it once — it never changes when hosting moves.
Encrypted mesh
Peer-to-peer QUIC with NAT traversal and relay fallback. No port forwarding, no router admin, no exposed game ports.
Always-on anchors
Optional anchor nodes hold replicated saves so group state survives even when every player PC is offline. Self-host one, or use a cloud anchor.
Supported games
Drivers are per-game and grouped by hosting style — more games join as they fit an existing hosting approach.
Minecraft Java
Vanilla and modded servers with snapshot saves and zero-config joins.
Valheim
Dedicated-server hosting with stop-then-snapshot saves, straight from the group.
Coming soon
Cloud anchors
A managed always-on anchor keeps your group's saves safe even when nobody's PC is online. The core stays open source — anchors are just another stone in the cairn.
See plansAnchor
$3/mo
- · ~25 GB deduplicated save storage
- · Every server in the group
- · Always-on replicated saves
- · 1 region
Open source, forever.
Varde's core technology is AGPL-3.0-or-later. Run it, study it, modify it, self-host all of it. Only the optional managed hosting lives here.