So I’m making a simple mobile game and wanted to add leaderboards to it for the daily challenge mode. Simple stuff.
But when setting up Google Play Games Service I had to create all these google cloud services and authorisation stuff, authenticate my website for some reason by uploading one of their files to it and they even wanted me to upload a video of myself to Youtube stating what I intend to do with the data I was collecting. I don’t want any data, I just want to allow my players to enter their high scores.
It made me feel like a criminal and it’s so confusing now. I gave up in the end, screw it. It’s not worth the effort, you would think it would be trivial to add such features for games on Googles own store, like it is for Steam.
I added Game service leaderboards to my first mobile game 10 years ago and it was simple. What’s happening to this world, I even got interrogated by Agent Smith for using adverts in my game. So many questions about data that I don’t even use.
I’m about to add a leaderboard system into my upcoming game and was wondering what option to choose. Years ago you were done setting up a simple server with some php scripts and a db, nowadays you need an encryption protected scalable https cloud architecture (to say the least) otherwise some aliens of an hostile world could intercept the scores of the best terran players and from these infer human tactics in a future battle with Earth Maybe a concept for a game!
Joking apart, I have currently found that Google Play Games(Android), Game Center(iOS), Playfab, Gamespark (not updated?), Pubnub, Epic Online Services(works with many platforms) are valid options but with different features and working platforms. A managed server, for example, needs extra work but at least you know for sure what user data (is anonymous gamer data as scores or achievements subject to privacy regulations?) are you using and sharing. And players don’t need to log with an account if you don’t want to (this is even possibile with Playfab anonymous login). And you can support which platform you like!
The downside is that you need to manage a server and do more than just that.
Now I’m trying to understand if, in general, players prefer anonymous login (a plus is that it doesn’t require user action) or normal login with Google, Facebook etc. What do you think about it?
PS.
Unity has the UnityEngine.Social API, does it support only Game Center?
I’m currently using Playfab for another game and it’s great but is limited to 100k players for free and I’m constantly removing lapsed players to keep below that. Due to piracy, things can escalate pretty quickly.
This upcoming game is free and I hope it will get a lot of downloads so I don’t know how much it would begin to cost for players above 100k
I think for a game such as mine where its just a his core, people would prefer anonymous login but if your game has a sense of progression like my other game players are happier to create an account.
I also have my own combu server hosted on a NAS but I’m unsure of the scalability of that for potentially lots of players.
Maybe a concept for a game!