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Clients should propose moves; the server should validate and commit them. Keep the game’s state transition deterministic and separate from networking and storage, then let clients render the accepted result—or show a temporary preview while they wait. This puts the trust decision on the server without forcing every interface update to wait for a round trip.
What server authority means for a board game
A client sends an intent, such as “move piece A to square B.” It does not get to declare “the move succeeded,” set a score, or report that it won. The server checks the request against its current game state, computes the outcome, and distributes the accepted state. In boardgame.io’s documented model, a game master computes the next state and broadcasts it; a client’s optimistic result is replaced if it differs from the master’s result (boardgame.io multiplayer documentation).
Unity’s Cloud Code chess example illustrates the checks involved: verify whose turn it is, whether a piece occupies the submitted location, whether the move is legal, and whether the move captures a piece or ends the game before saving updated state (Unity game state management). The exact rules vary by game, but the principle is the same: recalculate consequences from trusted state rather than accepting a client’s claimed outcome.
Separate the reducer from the server boundary
A reducer is a function that takes a state and an action and returns either a new state or a domain error. Keeping it pure means that the same state and action produce the same result: it does not write to a database, send a socket message, inspect a global variable, or choose unseeded randomness. That makes rules easier to test and replay; it is not, by itself, a security boundary. The server must still decide which requests reach the reducer and which resulting state is committed.
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Example: a move intent
For a chess-like game, the client might submit an action equivalent to {"type":"move","from":"e2","to":"e4"}. The server loads the authoritative board, verifies that the authenticated player owns the turn, checks the action’s shape and coordinates, and passes a validated move to the reducer. The reducer determines the resulting board or rejects the move. It should not trust a client-supplied board, score, capture result, or winner.
Keep side effects in orchestration
The surrounding server code handles identity, loading and committing state, transport, notifications, analytics, and any clock or randomness policy. If a rule genuinely depends on time or randomness, pass that input in explicitly or handle the decision through a controlled server lifecycle so it can be reproduced where needed. EigenInteractive documents one engine-specific approach in which state follows a seed and ordered actions, with randomness supplied through a replay-stable source; that is an example contract, not a requirement for every game (EigenInteractive’s contract documentation).
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A practical request-to-commit flow
- Submit intent with a version. The client sends a game identifier, the version it believes it is acting on, and an action. Use the authenticated session for identity rather than trusting an arbitrary player ID in the request body.
- Validate at the server boundary. Load current state and check membership, turn ownership, expected version, action schema, value ranges, permissions, and game-specific legality. Godot’s multiplayer guidance says to treat client input as untrusted and validate RPC arguments (Godot 4.7 high-level multiplayer documentation).
- Run the transition. Pass an immutable state snapshot and validated action to the deterministic reducer. Receive a new state or a domain error without performing network or persistence operations inside the reducer.
- Commit atomically. Save the next state and advance its version together. If history or replay is required, record the accepted action as part of the same consistent operation where the storage model permits it.
- Publish the accepted view. Send each player the information they are allowed to see, then have clients replace or reconcile their previews with the server’s response.
- Handle stale or rejected actions explicitly. Return a clear rejection or refresh path instead of silently committing a client-side result.
The specific transaction, event-log, and retry strategy depends on the storage and concurrency model; there is no single implementation established by these engine guides.
Let clients stay responsive without making them authoritative
In a turn-based game, a client can immediately animate a proposed move or optimistically apply it to its local display while the server checks it. When the authoritative response arrives, the client accepts that state or corrects its preview. This can make interaction feel faster under network delay, but adds reconciliation work and can briefly show a move that is later rejected. The boardgame.io documentation describes this client-preview and master-correction pattern (boardgame.io multiplayer documentation).
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Prediction is optional. Avoid it when the client lacks information needed to calculate the result, when a speculative display would reveal secrets, or when the cost of correcting a misleading preview outweighs the responsiveness benefit. Server-only transitions are simpler to reason about from the client’s perspective, while optimistic previews trade that simplicity for a more immediate interface.
Keep hidden information out of unauthorized messages
Hiding an opponent’s cards or objective in the interface does not make them secret if the client has already received them. Keep the complete authoritative state on the server and build a player-specific observation or projection before sending updates. A player should receive only the public information and private information they are entitled to see. EigenInteractive’s documentation describes hidden information as part of player-specific observations (EigenInteractive’s engine overview).
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Prevent stale moves and other common failures
Two requests target the same turn
Two devices or a retry may submit actions against the same state version. Without coordination, both can pass a check against the old state. Serialize transitions for a match or use a version/compare-and-swap guard so only one action from that version commits; the other request must be rejected or retried against the new state. The reviewed framework and engine guidance establishes server authority, but does not prescribe one database concurrency primitive.
The reducer is not actually deterministic
Reading wall-clock time, drawing unseeded randomness, or consulting mutable global state can make a transition impossible to reproduce reliably. Keep those inputs explicit or controlled outside the pure rule function. This matters for replay and debugging even when clients never run the reducer themselves.
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The server trusts too much of the request
Validate message size and frequency as well as game rules, permissions, and invariants. Server authority reduces reliance on client claims; it does not, by itself, prevent denial-of-service, account compromise, or infrastructure attacks. Godot discusses server performance and the added complexity of prediction, while Nakama describes authoritative multiplayer as a model for stricter control over gameplay rules (Godot high-level multiplayer; Nakama authoritative multiplayer).
Choose how much work happens on each side
| Approach | What the client does | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Server-only transition | Renders the latest accepted state and waits for the server’s move result. | Less reconciliation logic; visible updates depend on the server response and network delay. |
| Server authority with optimistic preview | Temporarily applies or animates a proposed action, then reconciles with the server. | Can feel more responsive, but adds correction complexity and may show a move that is rejected. |
Both approaches leave the server responsible for accepting moves and committing state. The right balance depends on the game’s pace, how much latency affects play, whether the action depends on hidden information, and the compute and bandwidth the service can support. The cited documentation describes these trade-offs but does not provide benchmark figures for a particular board game.
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