PlayDeck

PlayDeck is more than a product catalog — it's the core infrastructure behind Telegram's emerging gaming ecosystem. As a major directory for mini-games and interactive experiences, PlayDeck connects players, developers, and monetization tools across a highly distributed, real-time environment.

When the team behind PlayDeck approached H-Studio, their goal was clear: build a secure, scalable, and modular backend system designed to handle high-volume, real-time interactions — while deeply integrating with Telegram's ecosystem (bots, Stars tokens, TON payments, and in-chat games).

The challenge was to deliver an enterprise-grade foundation with startup agility — a system ready to handle unpredictable growth without requiring rebuilds later.

Our Challenge

Telegram's ecosystem has over 700 million monthly users and a rapidly growing in-chat gaming scene. To support this scale, PlayDeck needed a backend capable of:

• Managing thousands of concurrent players in real time.
• Handling continuous communication between bots, users, and games.
• Processing payments, achievements, and leaderboard updates within milliseconds.
• Scaling horizontally without downtime.
• Offering a developer-facing toolkit that makes onboarding and monetization seamless.

In short: real-time architecture, high-availability architecture with downtime-minimized deployments, and growth-ready scalability.

Our Approach

We designed and implemented PlayDeck's full backend architecture — from system design and data flow to deployment and monitoring — using a microservices-based architecture focused on speed, isolation, and observability.

Technology Stack

• Backend Core: Kotlin, Spring Framework
• Networking: Netty for high-efficiency async I/O
• Message Processing: Apache Kafka for event streaming
• Databases: PostgreSQL + jOOQ ORM for relational data
• Analytics & Storage: ClickHouse for large-scale event analytics
• Caching & Queues: Redis for leaderboards, caching, and Redis Streams for delayed jobs
• Dev Tools: Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines for continuous delivery

System Architecture

We structured the platform as independent, domain-specific services:

• User Service — authentication, profiles, and session state
• Game Catalog Service — indexing, search, and recommendations
• Leaderboard Service — real-time ranking and stats aggregation
• Payments Service — integration with TON and Telegram Stars
• Notification Service — push events, engagement, reminders
• Bot Gateway — secure communication layer between Telegram bots and backend

Each service runs in an isolated container, with load balancing, centralized logging, and auto-scaling via Kubernetes.

Automation & Observability

To ensure transparency and reliability, we implemented full observability:

• ELK stack and Grafana for real-time monitoring
• Slack-based alerting system for critical events
• Distributed tracing for debugging and optimization

Continuous delivery pipelines were built to support rapid iteration with downtime-minimized deployment workflows.

Security & Reliability

The architecture was designed with multi-layered security:

• Encrypted service-to-service communication
• Rate limiting and authentication at API-gateway level
• Automated security audits integrated into the CI/CD flow

Integration with Telegram

One of the most technically complex aspects was deep integration with Telegram's internal ecosystem:

• Bot API & Inline Games — instant launch of games directly from chat.
• TON Payments & Telegram Stars — multi-currency support for in-game purchases.
• Deep Linking & Referrals — seamless movement between games and user channels.
• Real-Time Messaging — handling thousands of concurrent bot updates per second.

This setup enables real-time synchronization between chat activity, game sessions, and backend systems — effectively turning Telegram into a complete gaming platform.

What We Delivered

• A modular, horizontally scalable backend designed for high-volume request handling.
• Developer Toolkit: onboarding portal, analytics, and monetization tools for game creators.
• High-load infrastructure built with fault tolerance, real-time communication, and instant scaling.
• Continuous deployment and observability integrated from day one.
• Deep Telegram integration, including TON, Stars, and bot-to-backend communication.
• Security-hardened architecture ready for enterprise-grade reliability.

Results

PlayDeck successfully launched and became a core infrastructure component within a fast-growing Telegram gaming ecosystem, supporting:

• Thousands of games and high-volume daily interactions
• Low-latency response times under peak load
• Downtime-minimized deployments
• A sustainable foundation for global developer onboarding and in-chat monetization

The system now powers a global community of developers and players who build, share, and play — all within Telegram.

Insights

• Scalable infrastructure is the foundation of product-market fit: you can't grow what can't handle growth.
• Observability, modular design, and async messaging (Kafka, Redis Streams) dramatically simplify real-time systems.
• Startup speed doesn't have to mean technical debt — the right stack makes both possible.

PlayDeck proves that even early-stage products can run on enterprise-level architecture without enterprise-level budgets. By combining modular microservices, event streaming, and automation, H-Studio helped create a platform that scales naturally — a perfect example of "Startup Engineering that Lasts."

Performance characteristics and scale depend on traffic patterns, usage scenarios, and operational context.