system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I’m new and need help with understanding servers

So me and a friend want to make a real time strategy game with casual, practice, and ranked modes. However I would need servers to do this and don’t really understand how that works and what I would need for it. If someone could explain how I could get servers for my game that would be very much appreciated.
gpt
“Server” is generally just a fancy word for another computer. They generally have a different OS than your home pc, like using windows Server Edition instead of Windows 10, or a Linux variant.

To create and run your game, you really only need your computer running the client, and the server software at the same time. If your friend is on the same network as you, you could both actually play with the “server” software running on your pc.

Then when you want to make the game accessible outside your network (from your friend’s house for example) you would usually get a dedicated piece of hardware, or use a cloud service like AWS or Azure to host your server software and then you and your friends clients will connect to that instead.