1. A system for balancing distribution of participants in a gaming environment, the system comprising: a plurality of application servers, each of the plurality of application servers hosting a common game application; a lobby server associated with the game application, the lobby server configured to assign a client device new to the game environment to one of the plurality of application servers; and a universe manager configured to receive periodic reports from each of the plurality of application servers as to the status of the game application hosted at each of the plurality of application servers, wherein the universe manager is further configured to instruct the lobby server to reallocate assignment of subsequent client devices new to the gaming environment in order to balance the number of client devices assigned to each of the plurality of application servers.