Techniques implemented by a game-hosting service to place a load balancer between client devices engaged in a game session and servers that maintain state data for the game session. Rather than having a single server maintain state data and host the game session, the load balancer will broadcast action data received from the client devices to the server that is hosting the game session, or “primary server,” and also to a redundant server that is maintaining state data for the game session, or “secondary server.” Thus, if the primary server is unable to continue hosting the session, the secondary server may begin hosting the game session using the state data maintained for the game session. Further, by offloading the network input/output (I/O) tasks of communicating with the client devices from the server to the load balancer, the server can allocate larger amounts of resources to hosting game sessions.