GTX Gaming | the worst hosting Company

So I contacted them on their websites and online chat messaging services and was connected to a guy called Lee. He seemed like a nice chap, and when he found out, I was the founder of Salty Zombies, which, at the time, ranked #1 on Battle Metrics for most popular RUST PVE servers. He got a little ecstatic. I mentioned we had 8 Dedicated Servers with Ping Perfect and were shopping around. I told him I would like to buy 2 of their Ryzens 7950x. Within 15 minutes of the conversation, the CEO of GTX Gaming, Mathew Griffin, joined the chat.

Lee and Mathew are both excellent salesmen. They bigged me up and made me feel like a celebrity. They practically laid out a virtual red carpet for me. I am not going to lie; I fell for it. They both assured me they have great servers, fast support, and good DDOS protection.

So I paid them $600+ for two Ryzens, one in the UK to expand our RUST PVE Servers and one in LA to expand on the 7 Days To Die Overhaul mods. The UK server login credentials came on the same day. But I noticed something a little weird with the ticket system.

GTX Gaming support tickets are public?

When replying to the tickets, I noticed that it asked me to enter my GTX Gaming login credentials each time I replied. I thought that was annoying. Then I realised it was not asking for my credentials to reply. It was because I was not logged in. But how can I view the ticket and chat history if I am not logged in? It's because all GTX Gaming Support tickets are public.

Yeah, that's right. If you have the ticket URL, you can view the entire ticket. I thought this was a significant security risk, so I replied and told them that this is where I can introduce you to Robert Pearson, GTX Gaming's Senior Network Engineer. This guy was the biggest moron in tech support I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. 

So Robbert, from GTX Gaming, replies to me and says, "It's not public, this is for your account only". I sent him an image of a screenshot of my friend who could access the ticket if he was given the ticket URL. I was somewhat shocked he was being so dense about it. Again, he dismissed me, stating, "I am not sure what your issue is here? I was just informing you of a delay earlier, and then I opened another ticket with your RDP info?"

Missing Server?

It was a rough start, but ok, I'm moving on. A few days went by whilst we were setting up the RUST UK server, and I noticed we still didn't have the LA Server login credentials. Robert said there would be a delay of 8 to 12 hours, but 4 days had passed and nothing. I sent him a message in the ticket, and he replied that the wrong RAM sticks were delivered. The correct sticks should arrive in a few days.

11 days after paying for the dedicated server in LA, there is still nothing. More excuses about the delay in delivering the RAM cards. GTX Gaming offered to set up a 128GB RAM server and upgrade it when ready. I didn't want the downtime for an engineer to change the RAM sticks over just after we launched. So, I decided to wait and push back the wipes on the 7D2D Overhaul mods by a week.

Caught In A Lie

We kept asking, and Robert, the GTX Gaming Senior Engineer, dropped a bomb. He said they have been swamped because of the Palworld and Enshrouded release, stock is selling out everywhere, and it's hard to get hold of the RAM.

So, it's been over 2 weeks since we paid them, and they accidentally admitted that they haven't even bought the RAM Sticks yet. I don't think Robert realised he had messed up, so we asked for the tracking information on this "delayed delivery." We never got it. Even when the CEO said he would give it to us, he never did.

To keep this part short, 4 weeks passed, and the server was never delivered to us. To add insult to injury, their system invoiced us for the renewal of the LA server, which we never got in the first place. 4 weeks of Robert, saying:

"8 to 12 hours" - "It will arrive any day now" - "ASAP" - "by the end of the day" - "I will update you in a few hours"

Only for him to never follow up. We even decided to take them up on their offer of getting the 128GB and upgrading later. Did they do it? No, of course not. Instead, they tried to get us to buy another dedicated server in New York, promising to be ready in 24 to 48 hours.

Roberts's reply was so ridiculous I could swear the GTX Gaming team had a poll going to see how long they could bullshit us before we finally gave up asking and cancelled the order. 

So what really happened to the LA server?

My personal opinion on what GTX Gaming did with our server. Is that, like most hosting companies, they didn't know Palworld would explode, and 1000's of people wanted Pal World Servers? So, I think the RAM Sticks arrived already, but they were running low on stock and decided to use the server we paid for to supplement their Palworld customers. I mean, think about it: why give us the server for $300 a month when they could probably fit 25 Palworld servers there for $40 a month?

Then they just kept lying to us, stringing us along. Offering the 128GB server instead, then denying that and asking us to buy another server in New York. Then, there would be "delays/issues" with that server. Anything to buy them time until the Palworld rush calmed down.

4 weeks after their lies and bullshit, I told them to cancel the order.

GTX Gaming's $4,338 invoice for another server they didn't have

As another example of GTX Gaming's chief engineer incompetence, we were so excited about the reasonable price of these new servers that we asked if they had any in Asia. The sales team said they didn't, but Ping Perfect told us this years ago until we offered to pay for one year upfront.

So, I pitched the same idea to GTX Gaming. The next thing I knew, Robert sent me an invoice for $4,338.15. Before I was about to pay, I asked where the server would be in Asia. Robert replied that we don't have any servers in Asia.

I wanted to reach through the screen and strangle this idiot. I asked him if he could please take more than 3 seconds to read a ticket and reply again. He did and responded in a few more words, "Sorry, busy with Palworld. There are no servers in Asia".

I replied, "Then why did you invoice me $4,338 for a 1-year contract?" Not to mention $4,338 divided by the 12 months of the year = $361.5 a month. That's $60 a month, more expensive than what we are paying now! Where the F*** did they even get this number from?

The GTX Gaming team does not communicate with each other, and Robert does not read the tickets properly. It's like he doesn't even care. But at least we have 1 working Server in the UK, and it's ready for launch, right?... WRONG!

Hardware Failure on the UK server.

After a few weeks of setting up the new RUST UK server, we launched it with the other RUST servers on forced wipe. Since it was new, the UK server was the smaller pop server, averaging 20 people. However, there were complaints about lag and network timeouts, which I thought was weird because it was the only gaming running on there. The RUST UK server barely used one of the 16 cores we had and only 12GB to 15GB of the 192GB of RAM.

Then, about 7 days into the wipe, the server went offline. I couldn't access the game panel or connect via SSH. I contacted them, and they confirmed it was offline. I rebooted it via iDrac. One day later, it did the same thing, and again, it needed another reboot from the GTX Gaming team.

The next day, it goes out for good. Not even the GTX Gaming staff can access it. They contacted the Datacenter and found the server had a hardware failure. The RAM sticks need replacing. They asked me when would be a good time to send an engineer to replace the sticks and gave me a time frame for when they were available. I said since the server is down and now is within their time frame, let's do it ASAP. So they did, and half a day later, the server was back online for at least 12 hours anyway. Then, it goes offline for good again.

Multiple Hardware Failure???

Another hardware failure; this time, they didn't tell me what it was. The GTX Gaming team just said they would need to move the hard drives into another machine. But since it was no Friday evening, no engineer would be available until Monday.

Move the hard drive to another machine!!! Hardware failure is rare for dedicated servers, but MULTIPLE HARDWARE failures are virtually impossible, especially on a new Machine. Ryzen 7950x release date was just over a year old, and it's only compatible with RAM and motherboards of similar ages.

So, how in the world can a new Ryzen dedicated server have multiple hardware failures? And only within a few weeks of us using it? 

All the bullshit and issues you have read so far had pretty much happened within a month. If this was the first month with GTX Gaming, I can't imagine being with them for another month or even a year. So, At this point, I was done. I do not want to be in business with GTX Gaming or have anything to do with them.

I told them not to bother fixing the server; I want out. Just refund me for the UK Server and the LA server that never existed, and let's part ways. We moved all the UK Servers back to the EU, and my team and I compensated every UK player for whatever they lost. We even spent the weekend helping them rebuild their bases.

NO REFUNDS!!!

GTX Gaming - "What hardware issue?"

Email With The CEO of GTX Gaming

After they refused to refund me for the broken UK machine, I told them I would do a PayPal reversal. They ignored me and marketed the ticket as "Answered". I thought the leading GTX Gaming network engineer, Robert, who had been lying and misleading us for over a month, was hiding the ongoings of this whole situation from the CEO but repeatedly marked the ticket as answered every time I replied. I worked with the WHMIC ticket system before; marketing it as answered hides it from everyone as technically it's considered as "solved", so no one can see it unless you go to review previously solved tickets.

So, I emailed the CEO of GTX Gaming directly. He replied, stating he knew of the situation and that my talking about doing a PayPal reversal was "threatening and tantamount to blackmail" and was willing to listen if I could list out why I had such a bad experience "succinctly". Firstly, explaining your next steps if you didn't get a refund for being sold a broken product is not even in the same realm as Blackmail. I am starting to see that he, too, doesn't seem to be in the grasp of reality.

Regardless, I wrote all the issues respectfully and in bullet points, just as he asked. He didn't even reply.

To add insult to injury, when I asked Robert to cancel the UK server since we don't want anything to do with GTX Gaming, he kept marking the ticket as "Answered". He didn't cancel the order, and I was autocharged $310 for the UK server renewal.

GTX Gaming Lied in the PayPal Dispute

I opened the dispute with PayPal. Strangely, though, PayPal has no clear avenues to state "sold faulty product". You can only open disputes under titles like "not as described", "was not delivered", or "not satisfied with services". Then, there are subtitles under these main titles, none of which clearly allowed me to state "broken product".

So I went with not as subscribed since GTX Gaming guarantees 100% uptime on their website. And within 9 days of launching the RUST UK server, it was down for the entire weekend. I then added in about the multiple hardware failures, network issues, etc. GTX Gaming had a week to reply, which they did on their last day.

Now, if they argued against the dispute with something legit, honest, or just their perspective of what happened, for example:

"We did our best to accommodate the customer, but hardware failure is something that happens. We fixed it as quickly as we could... we don't feel our level of services warrants a refund, blah, blah."

I would have at least respected them for having a different perspective on the matter. But they didn't. They straight up lied to the PayPal dispute team, telling them they had already refunded me. They gave PayPal the refund transaction IDs of the LA server that never came and the auto-renewal of the UK Server that I asked them to cancel, knowing full well that I was asking for a refund of the original payment to the UK Server.

Final Thoughts

No hosting company will be perfect. Just as games you host have bugs you can't fix or issues that are out of your control. Hosting companies will have similar problems with the different data centres they use. But I certainly have a new appreciation for Ping Perfect. We have been with them for 4 years, and I have checked out other hosting companies, like Tempest, Nitrado, BlueFang, and Packet Data and always decided that Ping Perfect do a good job all around.