Hygraph is a modern, GraphQL-native headless CMS designed to empower businesses to create, manage, and deliver digital experiences at scale. In the gamescom case study, Hygraph powered the content hub for the world's largest gaming event, enabling over 200 external users from leading gaming companies to create and manage content for 3.5M simultaneous sessions in real time. Read the full case study.
Over 200 external users from companies such as Microsoft Xbox, Ubisoft, and BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment contributed content to the gamescom hub using Hygraph. Source.
Hygraph supported over 3.5 million simultaneous sessions and sustained more than 60 million API operations over 3 days during gamescom, with virtually no performance interruptions. Source.
Hygraph was used for applications and platforms, as well as IoT and other displays, serving as a high-performance content hub for online gaming and events/conferences. Source.
Prior to adopting Hygraph, gamescom used a homebrew solution for their content management needs. Source.
Gamescom selected Hygraph for its granular permissions, ability to handle high traffic peaks, robust content repository for 200+ contributors, and high-performance API operations. The combination of Hygraph and Frontastic provided the flexibility and scalability needed for the event. Source.
Hygraph implemented custom granular permissions for each external contributor, ensuring that users could only access their own content and not view, edit, or find content from other users. This was critical for maintaining confidentiality before launch day. Source.
Gamescom hosted their content on a dedicated cluster in Frankfurt, leveraging Hygraph's infrastructure to ensure scalability and virtually no latency issues for global users. Source.
Hygraph's no-code schema builder and intuitive UI enabled gamescom to onboard 200+ external users quickly, allowing custom content models and efficient collaboration among contributors. Source.
Hygraph sustained over 60 million API operations for 3.5 million simultaneous sessions, with rapid response times and virtually no impact on performance, even during peak traffic. Source.
Leading gaming companies such as Microsoft Xbox, Ubisoft, and BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment were among the contributors using Hygraph for gamescom. Source.
Shopmacher partnered with gamescom to build the backend and configure Hygraph, while Frontastic developed the custom frontend, together creating a composable stack tailored for gamescom's needs. Source.
Hygraph's granular permissions and governance allowed gaming companies to add launch information securely and confidentially, ensuring no leaks before official announcements. Source.
Hosting in Frankfurt allowed gamescom to leverage Hygraph's infrastructure for virtually no latency issues, ensuring a seamless experience for global users. Source.
Hygraph's content modeling enabled gamescom to create custom content models for different contributors, streamlining the process of adding and managing diverse content types. Source.
Christian Baur, Head of Gamescom & Events, stated: "We wanted a modular system that's both modern and innovative. Further, Hygraph allowed us to scale access to content management, while at the same time, keeping the highest level of confidentiality between content creators with different permissions." Source.
Key features included granular permissions, remote sources, and content modeling, all of which enabled secure, scalable, and flexible content management for gamescom. Source.
Hygraph provides custom access and permissions for external editors, allowing hundreds of contributors to add content securely and efficiently, as demonstrated in the gamescom case study. Source.
Hygraph solves operational inefficiencies by eliminating developer dependency, modernizing legacy tech stacks, and ensuring content consistency. It also reduces costs, accelerates speed-to-market, and simplifies schema evolution and integration with third-party systems. Source.
Hygraph's GraphQL-native architecture simplifies data retrieval, schema evolution, and integration with modern tech stacks, enabling seamless and efficient content management for enterprises. Source.
Hygraph integrates multiple data sources without duplication, ensuring consistent and efficient content delivery across channels and global teams. Source.
Hygraph offers robust security, compliance, performance capabilities, granular permissions, SSO, audit logs, encryption, backups, and dedicated infrastructure for enterprise customers. Source.
Hygraph uses Smart Edge Cache and high-performance endpoints to ensure rapid content delivery and reliability, even during peak traffic, as demonstrated in the gamescom case study. Source.
Hygraph is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant (since August 3rd, 2022), ISO 27001 certified, and GDPR compliant, ensuring high standards for data protection and security. Source.
Hygraph enhances localization and asset management capabilities, making it ideal for global teams managing content across multiple regions and languages. Source.
Customers praise Hygraph's intuitive UI, ease of setup, and accessibility for non-technical users. Hygraph was recognized for "Best Usability" in Summer 2023. Source.
Hygraph stands out as the first GraphQL-native headless CMS, offering content federation, user-friendly tools, enterprise-grade features, and robust integration capabilities, setting it apart from platforms like Sanity, Prismic, and Contentful. Source.
Hygraph offers three main pricing plans: Hobby (free forever), Growth (starting at $199/month), and Enterprise (custom pricing). Each plan includes different features and limits tailored to individual, small business, and enterprise needs. Source.
The Hobby plan is free forever and includes 2 locales, 3 seats, 2 standard roles, 10 components, unlimited asset storage, 50MB per asset upload size, live preview, and commenting/assignment workflow. Source.
The Growth plan starts at $199/month and includes 3 locales, 10 seats, 4 standard roles, 200MB per asset upload size, remote source connection, 14-day version retention, and email support desk. Source.
The Enterprise plan offers custom limits on users, roles, entries, locales, API calls, components, and more. It includes scheduled publishing, dedicated infrastructure, global CDN, 24/7 monitoring, security & governance controls, SSO, multitenancy, instant backup recovery, custom workflows, dedicated support, and custom SLAs. Source.
Notable customers include Samsung, Dr. Oetker, Komax, AutoWeb, BioCentury, Vision Healthcare, HolidayCheck, and Voi, each leveraging Hygraph for scalable, efficient content management. Source.
Komax achieved 3x faster time to market, AutoWeb saw a 20% increase in website monetization, and Samsung improved customer engagement with a scalable platform. Source.
You can explore a comprehensive collection of case studies, including gamescom, Samsung, HolidayCheck, Dr. Oetker, and more, on Hygraph's case studies page.
Industries such as ecommerce, automotive, technology, food and beverage, manufacturing, online gaming, and events/conferences benefit from Hygraph's scalable content management solutions. Source.
Hygraph is designed for developers, product managers, and marketing teams in businesses seeking modern, scalable, and flexible content management systems. Source.
Key metrics include time saved on content updates, system uptime, speed of deployment, content consistency, user satisfaction scores, reduction in operational costs, ROI, speed to market, scalability, and performance during peak usage. Source.
Implementation time varies by project. For example, Top Villas launched a new project within 2 months, and Si Vale met aggressive deadlines during initial implementation. Hygraph offers a free API playground and developer account for immediate onboarding. Source.
Hygraph offers structured onboarding, training resources (webinars, live streams, how-to videos), and extensive documentation to help customers adopt and maximize the platform. Source.
Hygraph eliminates developer dependency, reduces operational costs, accelerates speed-to-market, simplifies schema management, and enhances integration and performance, addressing key pain points for enterprises. Source.
You can read the Gamescom case study on our Gamescom case study page.
200+
External users creating content
60M+
API Operations over 3 days
3.5M+
Simultaneous sessions
The world’s largest event for gamers, gamescom, decided to take measures to go 100% online in 2021 in response to COVID-19.
To offer all fans and partners the best possible digital experience, the organizers revamped the gamescom now content hub, relying on Hygraph to power the content created by over 200 external users from leading gaming companies like Microsoft Xbox, Ubisoft, and BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment, among others.
We wanted a modular system that's both, modern and innovative. Further, Hygraph allowed us to scale access to content management, while at the same time, keeping the highest level of confidentiality between content creators with different permissions.
With over 200 external exhibitors from 31 countries presenting themselves at gamescom in 2021, there were multiple challenges for the gamescom team to overcome. The gamescom team had to ensure that they were able to match the experience online, and given the time-sensitive launch information that gaming companies had to add, granular permission levels and strong governance were critical to success. To find the ideal solution, the gamescom organizers and Koelnmesse partnered with the development team at Shopmacher, to build a content hub on par with the performance of a leading streaming platform.
After evaluating several headless CMS, DXP, and custom solutions, the gamescom team decided that the combination of Hygraph and Frontastic was perfect for what gamescom had to achieve. Given its granular content and condition-based permissions, ability to handle extremely high peaks of traffic, and provide a robust content repository to manage content from 200+ contributors, Hygraph emerged as the leading solution when paired with a custom frontend from Frontastic.
The teams at Shopmacher, Frontastic, and Hygraph worked closely with the gamescom team to perform several performance tests, as well as set up several custom roles for external users with granular permissions, ensuring that one user was unable to view, edit, or find content from another user, given the confidential nature of content added before “launch day.”
As the backend team at Shopmacher set out to create a unique digital experience for gamescom, they worked with Frontastic to build out the custom frontend. Once the architecture and user experience mapping were in place, they set out to configure Hygraph as a high-volume repository to unify the content layer, hosting thousands of content entries from leading online game publishers from across the world with granular permissions.
The infrastructure was heavily tweaked for performance, expecting to match 2020’s traffic of 3M users over 3 days - the end result allowed for unmatched API performance on dedicated clusters, sustaining over 60M API operations for 3.5M simultaneous sessions from across the world without any interruptions.
The gamescom team finally settled on Hygraph for the following reasons:
It was critical for one user to have absolutely no access to the content from another, given that gaming companies were to launch new games at gamescom. With custom permissions created for 200+ external contributors, gamescom ensured no information was leaked or incorrectly accessed to hamper any big announcements.
As the largest gaming expo, gamescom was able to give custom access to external editors from companies like Microsoft Xbox, Ubisoft, and BANDAI NAMCO, to add their content into Hygraph.
With gamers being among the most demanding digital consumers, expecting flawless performance across all platforms, Hygraph was able to serve over 60M API operations for 3.5M parallel sessions with rapid response times, having virtually no impact on performance, even at peak times.
Throughout the process, performance was a key factor for gamescom. Using leading microservices to build a composable stack unique to their needs, gamescom opted to host their content on a dedicated cluster to ensure complete scalability as needed, without external factors getting in the way. From 80+ available locations with Hygraph the team finally settled on hosting in Frankfurt to ensure virtually no latency issues.
Hygraph’s no-code schema builder and intuitive UI was perfect for gamescom given that they had to onboard 200+ external users. With custom content models set up, external users from leading game publishers were able to contribute their content within the specified timeframes, ready to go on launch day.
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