Killing Floor 2 Server Hosting

What game modes can you run on a Killing Floor 2 server?

A Killing Floor 2 dedicated server can run Survival, Endless, Weekly Outbreak and Versus Survival. Survival is the classic loop: six players hold out through escalating waves and finish against a boss, and it is where most squads grind perks on Suicidal or Hell on Earth. Endless removes the wave cap and keeps scaling the Zeds, which makes it a favorite for long late-night sessions. Weekly Outbreak rotates special rule sets, and Versus hands part of the lobby control of the Zeds against the human team.

You can lock the server with a game password for your own group or leave it public so it shows up in the server browser. A server near your players also beats the random high-ping lobbies that matchmaking sometimes drops you into. One thing worth knowing before you start adding mods: KF2 tracks a server's ranked status. Stock settings keep it ranked, while non-whitelisted mutators and some script-heavy custom maps can flip it to unranked and affect perk XP gains. Decide early whether your community is there to level perks or to play wild modded rule sets, and configure accordingly.

How much RAM does a KF2 dedicated server need?

For a standard six-player server, Silver 6GB is a comfortable starting point and the smallest plan we offer for this game. Player count is not what drives memory use on a KF2 server; content is. Every Workshop map is downloaded to disk and loaded into memory when it becomes the active level, and big community maps with custom models and audio weigh far more than the stock set. If you plan to rotate fifteen or twenty Workshop maps, Gold 8GB or Platinum 10GB gives you real headroom.

CPU behaves differently. When a wave peaks with dozens of Zeds on screen, one core carries most of the load, so moving between the 4 vCore plans adds RAM and disk rather than making a single server tick faster. Pushing the slot count past six with a mutator increases both the Zed count and network traffic, and that is where Diamond 12GB or the 6 vCore Emerald 16GB start to make sense. Every plan includes at least 60 GB of NVMe storage, which easily holds the game files and a sizable Workshop cache, though pruning maps nobody votes for anymore keeps things tidy.

How do you add Workshop maps and mutators?

Adding a Workshop map takes three small edits, all doable from the control panel's file manager or over SFTP. Stop the server first: KF2 writes its in-memory settings back to the ini files on shutdown, so edits made while it runs can be silently overwritten.

First, in the KFEngine.ini file, add one ServerSubscribedWorkshopItems= line per map under the [OnlineSubsystemSteamworks.KFWorkshopSteamworks] section, using the number from the map's Workshop URL. Second, make sure the [IpDrv.TcpNetDriver] section contains DownloadManagers=OnlineSubsystemSteamworks.SteamWorkshopDownload, which is what lets clients grab the map from Steam. Third, in KFGame.ini, add the map to your GameMapCycles list and create a KFMapSummary entry with its name so it appears in the rotation and the end-of-match vote.

Mutators load through the ?Mutator= option on the server's launch line. The community has built mutators that raise the player cap, rebalance perks or tweak spawn rates. Add them one at a time and check the console output after each restart; when something breaks, you will know exactly which mutator caused it.

Config files, web admin and day-to-day management

Killing Floor 2 keeps its settings in ini files under KFGame/Config. On Windows builds they are named PCServer-KFGame.ini and PCServer-KFEngine.ini; the Linux build generates the same files with a LinuxServer- prefix. KFGame.ini holds gameplay rules such as server name, AdminPassword, difficulty, game length and the map cycle, while KFEngine.ini covers networking and Workshop subscriptions.

The web admin is the tool KF2 admins live in. Once bEnabled=true is set in KFWeb.ini, it listens on port 8080 by default; the username is admin and the password is the AdminPassword from KFGame.ini. From there you change maps, queue the next difficulty, kick or ban, and read chat. If several people moderate the server, switch the web admin to its multi-admin authentication so everyone gets a separate login instead of sharing one password.

Whenever Tripwire ships a patch, the server files need to match the new client version or players will fail to connect with a version mismatch. Before a big config change, take a manual backup from the panel on top of the automatic ones; it takes seconds and saves an evening of guesswork.

How do players join your KF2 server?

Players can join through the in-game server browser or directly by IP from the console. In the browser, searching for your server name and setting the difficulty and mode filters correctly is usually enough, as long as the server is public. The faster route is the console: open it in game, type open followed by your server's IP:port, and the client connects straight away. You will find the IP and port in your control panel as soon as the server is provisioned.

To keep the server private, set a game password in KFGame.ini and share it with your squad on Discord. The first time someone joins a server running a Workshop map, they may wait a few minutes while the map downloads; after that it loads from their local cache. If a friend cannot connect, check versions first: both the client and the server must be on the current patch. Still stuck? Send the connection lines from the panel console to our support team and we will look at it with you, around the clock.