Public PlayFab beta: Photon webhooks, new Unity package

Community Showcases
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We’re pleased to announce that we are making our current Photon and Unity beta program available to all developers!

With this release, we’re making it easier than ever to use PlayFab, with a no-code-required prefab to get your Unity project connecting to our backend and one-click configuration of your title in the Photon Cloud.

We’re very interested in your feedback as you use these programs. If you have any questions or comments about these offerings, please email beta@playfab.com.

Photon integration beta

You can find the Photon tab in Game Manager under the Servers tab. Follow the instructions there to register for a Photon account and you will then see your Photon Application IDs right in Game Manager. These IDs will be automatically provisioned in our Photon Cloud instance, preconfigured to call into Cloud Script via webbooks, so that you can add server-authoritative logic right away.

Our Using Photon with PlayFab guide explains how to create and join a Photon room, how to trigger a webhook, and where to download code samples.

Unity update beta

The latest update to our Unity package makes integration as easy as drag-and-drop. With the new PlayFab Manager prefab, you get device authentication and analytics with zero code, plus receipt validation and push notifications with zero native code.

To download the new package, please go to http://bit.ly/1DcDHf1. The ReadMe file included has instructions for integrating it with your Unity project.

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Awesome, I’ve been waiting for this!! :slight_smile:

Is there a reason this isn’t in the asset store?

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@erebel55 : We’re working with the Unity team on that right now. :slight_smile:

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Maybe i should take a look at it again for our game :slight_smile:

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@BFGames : You know I’ll say “yes”. :slight_smile: Let us know if you run into any questions while you’re checking out the latest updates!

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Last time i played around with PlayFab it was REALLY easy to use, so don’t expect any problems hehe

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Only drawback I find with this setup, is the third party service “playfab” cloud

nothing wrong with it, infact simple and easy, but the actual service,

One will have to rely on their service , feeling that our game is not ours, but a leased one, having to deal with highjacked userbase.data and stats

Sorry, I just can not bare this setup, Ijust does not feel right to my eyes.

I felt the same with hero engine, your binded to their mercy, It just does not feel right at all,
some people say it is just a service, but it really bothers me, feels like a slap on the face, sorry, but it is my honest opinion, i just cant help expressing it.

Waiting for a selhosted license setup.where we can feel that our game is ours, where we have 100% control of the backend.
where we deal with everything. and not being on someonelses mercy.

anyways, I doubt this will happen, I better craft our own instead.not a big deal, it just takes time. but eventually will get there.

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@GraphXCreations : I do understand your concern about taking an external dependency. Particularly in the games industry, there’s a history of wariness about anything which means not owning 100% of your code and infrastructure. This has changed as people have recognized the advantages to making use of existing technologies. It’s been a long time since game developers have had to write their own video codecs, most people use existing physics engines, and Unity itself is a complete engine for developing games - something you’d have to spend considerable time and money to create.

The thing is, backend services are no different. They take considerable time and effort to create and maintain, and as an individual game developer, you don’t get any of the advantages of scale that come with a service like PlayFab (which go well beyond lower costs).

Our service is designed to be a flexible backend for any game developer, from the smallest titles to the largest, and we make it clear through our Terms of Service that your data does and always will belong to you, as well as provide for the worst-case scenario of something happening to us. If you should choose to move to another service or set up your own, we can arrange for a drop of all your data to enable that. If a meteor strike should take out our whole team (well, multiple simultaneous strikes - we’re not all in one place), there’s a provision which lets you take our code and run the service yourself.

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yeah, I dont know, maybe i am one of those who wants full control of the setup, and not depending on third parties services,

long are gone the days where it used to be this kind of slavery, where only big monopolies were taking most of the business market because being the only service provider outhere, so if one needed a service one had to low your head down and what ever priced the monopoly asked and obey their own terms of service which were always to benefit themselves and doing ol sort of abusive towards client,

but thank god those tyrannic days are over, and gone for good, at least in the game industry. this is changing by the day, getting better and better.

not saying playfab one of them, altho, your service is unique, so whoever needs your nice features will have to agree with your terms of service, that being “you like what we offer, well you can only have it our way if you like”.

anyways, not here to judge, this is 2015, game industry have open widely and accessible to everyone.and everywhere, while 10 years ago a single person with no startup funding will never dream of using a game engine technology due of its inaccessibility and only to the bigdogs studios.
look at Unity, free to use, Unreal, full source available to whomever, Bigworld mmo engine from $500k and up to $299 one time fee for indies. full server and client control.
I can keep on naming all day long.

like I say, too many resources outhere, so no worries, we can live without playfab. at least I can,
do not mean any disrespect, its your business your product and you free to do as you please with it,
its 2015, power to the indie devs and getting better and better every day.

regards and best of luck.

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Indeed, you’re exactly right on how much better it is for developers these days. To help with that, we give developers the ability to test out the service for free, and we don’t charge for our features under 1000 DAU (unless you need custom game servers - we pass on the price of those with a minimal markup to cover our costs). My feeling is, even if you want to build it all yourself, at least you can jumpstart your development by building design elements on our tech while you build your own.

And I wouldn’t worry about us being some kind of cold “our way or the highway” company - as you say, there’s more and more out there for developers every day, and I’m sure that competition will always exist in this space. Also, we prioritize our work in part based upon the feedback we regularly receive from developers, so if there’s something you need, please let us know. We’re always interested in feedback!

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thanks, but i like to use your setup, but in a self hosted license. meaning, hosting the application anywhere i like.not where you assign me.or in a shared cloud.

so there you have it, this is my feedback as you mentioned you listen to the developers using playfab, here is mine, hopefully you guys do a self hosted license soon. i am pretty sure this is not the first time you hear this petition.

thanks again

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We’ve had a slightly similar request - that we create a completely separate instance of our service, which we host and maintain on behalf of the publisher in question - but that would still not be self-hosted. The issue with what you suggest is that you would be responsible for all the costs, as well as maintenance and operation.

On the cost side of things, there’s an economy of scale which is what allows us to offer our service for less than what you can run it for directly. Consider that you have a base cost for running the servers 24/7, as well as the cost for whoever is responsible for making sure that the servers are always updated and taking care of any issues which occur in day-to-day operation. The incremental cost of the actual calls is there as well, of course, but that’s linear with traffic. So the base cost gets spread across all traffic for all titles. Oh, and if you want high reliability, you have to do what we do and run in multiple availability zones, multiplying the minimum hosting cost by at least 2.

For maintenance and operation, aside from the cost of the people who will be doing this (which is part of the base cost above), there’s the simple fact that you would need people managing the servers on an ongoing basis. In addition to operating system updates, dealing with hosting center issues, and tracking issues caused by aberrant client behavior (not just due to client code bugs - for a game with any popularity at all, you’ll get people hacking the client), they’ll also have to stay on top of updating for our deployments, as we’re continually improving and optimizing our service. Since most people don’t get into the game industry to work in Ops, finding and keeping folks in that role can be a real challenge.

Then too, there’s the fact that we provide our service for free under 1000 DAU, so that you can do all of your development work without incurring cost. That way, you can have the full set of backend features from day one so that you can start designing against them immediately, but doing so without having to be concerned about paying for your backend services until you ship.

Again, I understand your concern about not owning the backend directly. But as our terms of service state, you own your data - we don’t restrict access in any way - and even in the worst-case scenario, you can still reliably continue service directly. If you have specific concerns about operating in a “shared cloud”, as you describe it, could you detail those? The way our service is designed, a problematic title can be isolated to prevent it from impacting other titles, and you have the ability to manage the users for your title in accounts which are completely distinct from all others in the service, using a Publisher ID (you could have one for all your titles, one for each title, or anything in between).

Ultimately, you need to make the call on how you want to invest both your time and money as a developer. From my own experiences, I want developers to have the tools they need to be able to optimize their time around developing new gameplay experiences, and the ability to take risks with those designs by minimizing their costs. During the years I was with the ATG team in Xbox, I had the opportunity to be part of the Dream, Build, Play program, and I can definitely say that what I saw was that when developers have that freedom, they come up with amazing and creative concepts.

Brendan

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Thanks for the detail explanation, I am aware or of all the above,

but still, it feels like hijacked game to me.

this is quite simple, I mean you just want to have all control of your service. dont you?

Iguess you concerned of your unique service source code, and you dont want to provide self hosted license for fear of competition looking at your source code and share your revenue.

most likely I assume that is the main reason why you dont offer the self hosted license.

but seems you one of the few outhere that are affraid of this, pretty much 99% of online application now adays are self hosted, ofcourse they protect their source with existing 3rd party or custom made encryption tools to protect their work.

like I said, long are the prehistoric days of internet apps monopoly, but looks you still living in last decade.

look around, and you will realize what I am saying is not a lie or making this up.

free your self, you said you listen to your users feedback. join this last decade of game industry ongoing great changes and wonderful tools available pretty much for every single game developer around the globe, it is a global market, everyone is changing for good, dont miss the train.
Yeah, there are drawbacks, your code being exposed or even cracked side open, but the big dogs outhere ie: autodesk, adobe, unity3d, Bigworld, etc… dont seem to get poor or out of business, it is virial free advertising having a cracked or pirated app outhere, more power to you, since it means your app is popular, instead the bigdods just keep on updating their apps in an ongoing development. So meaning it works being a popular app outhere.

Anyways this is nothing new, you may be old enough or business experienced to notice this.

Now, there are tons of source protection tools, I mean you still get revenue from this licensing model.

hell, you can do a flat monthly fee for licensing your app in a selfhosted license, do one for indies and other for studios etc…
then you dont worry about your cloud or bandwith or IT work, you just lease it and get monthly subscriptions. let the self hosted users worry about bandwidth and hardware and IT costs.

Ill bet youll get more revenue than your current license model.

just my .002

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@GraphXCreations : No, it’s really much simpler than that. By hosting all of this for developers, we remove a great deal of complexity, and are able to give them a much lower cost than they could get on their own. Think of it this way: a service like ours is more akin to something like Parse, but with a wide range of features specifically designed for the needs of games. And since we provide access to all data for your game and all the hooks needed to monitor and analyze your game’s performance, there’s really no advantage to self-hosting. The goal is to make it as simple and convenient as possible for developers to have a complete backend to power their games - nothing nefarious or controlling in any way.

If you believe there are specific advantages to self-hosting, or you have specific concerns about ownership of your data (which you have in our service) or your customers (ditto), could you please detail those so that we can address them?

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well, you just keep on looping back to he same over and over, i already told you not once but many times what the specific concerns, i guess you not really listening,

I can make it more direct and make a list point by point to see if you realize now what i have been saying repetitive times.
concerns:
1- feels hijacked game.
2- sharing the cloud with others, meaning performance issues.
3- our team already owns a farm of servers in a colo facility, therefore we dont want hijacked service. we want our own self hosted app, which we can 100% control, if an event of failure or issue, we want to have full control and not waiting for a third party external hands that we dont know.
4- at this lvl of development, we dont care if it is not simple, we know how to manage a dedicated game server, what needs and what not. therefore most networking developers, dont really care for simple. or noob stuff
5- and one above all, i just dont trust you or anyone else with my customer base. my customers are my customers and why should you even know who they are and what they do. they trusted our game and our team, why should their personal info be exposed to you or your business partners as you state in your privacy polucy where you state you will share our client info with your company service providers, so is not just you, but your team and your providers, where is this going to end.
6- which leads to privacy issues.

this is just plain wrong, why should you or your service providers even dare to contact my very own clients?
why would you want to do that?

is like if the datacenter staff where my colo farm is located try to get into my client base and contact on their behalf because they happen to be in their network datacenter. therefore they have the right to extract all hardware boxes client information, really?

sorry man, but will you trust me with your personal financial information of your family or your business?
I dont thinks so.

because a clientele database is financial information, meaning they pay the bill, therefore that is our business we live from.

if you need more, I can just go on and on.

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Actually, no, I’m making a good faith effort to work with you to answer any valid concerns you have. From the responses so far, I do understand that you have a strong personal aversion to a hosted service. I’ll address your concerns as stated, but I don’t believe, given the positive response we’ve had from a large segment of the developer community, that your opinion is shared by the majority.

So, addressing your specific concerns:

1- feels hijacked game.

This is a tautology. I understand that you feel this way - what I’d like to do is drill down to specific reasons, so that I can address them.

2- sharing the cloud with others, meaning performance issues.

This is incorrect. As I stated, we specifically designed our service to be able to reallocate titles as needed, so that titles using more resources are separated, preventing impact to others.

3- our team already owns a farm of servers in a colo facility…
4- at this lvl of development, we dont care if it is not simple, we know how to manage a dedicated game server…
5- and one above all, i just dont trust you or anyone else with my customer base…

None of these are concerns. They’re saying that you have already built a datacenter which you run, which you’re happy with, and that you don’t believe that anyone else should have access to your users.

On the last part, I completely agree that data must be protected. We do not share your player data with any other developer, and the only circumstance in which we would share it with a third party is if it benefits your title (ad networks, etc.), and those are things we would make clear if and when they were to be implemented.

For the rest, congratulations - building a complete backend service is a significant undertaking, which requires a large investment of time, money, and personnel, as I’m sure you’re aware. If you ever decide that you don’t want to continue your spending on this, we’d be happy to work with you.

But in that case, I’m puzzled as to your level of investment with this thread. Is it your belief that all developers should invest in building a similar datacenter, with all that this entails?

6- which leads to privacy issues.

I’m sorry, but I don’t see how that follows. We specifically protect user privacy, and have a privacy policy which is designed to ensure that we’re giving you, the developer, the ability to manage user data, while complying with international regulations. The paragraph you quoted is only a partial statement, clipping off the last portion of the paragraph, which calls out that PlayFab does not share, sell, rent, or trade any information provided with third parties for their promotional purposes. For anyone with an interest in reviewing the complete text, it’s located here. I would encourage anyone with concerns about it to work with us directly.

The remaining issues you describe are pretty severe hyperbole, and quite honestly, uncalled for. I have a strong respect for any team which has accomplished what you describe for your own, as well as the integrity shown by anyone fighting for user privacy, and I would appreciate it if you would do me the same courtesy. I have worked for many years in the privacy space, and care deeply about making sure user information is not abused. Specific to your statements:

a) PlayFab does not host any financial information of any kind. All real-money transactions are accomplished via well-established payment providers, who are required to comply with all the laws and regulations of every region in which they operate.

b) No member of the PlayFab team would abuse data in the way you describe. Doing so would be grounds for immediate termination. No business seeking to be in this space would do otherwise. A failure to protect user data would be catastrophic, as it would result in a loss of faith from which it would be all but impossible to recover.

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lol, and yet you have done it again.

going around the bush over and over.

I tell you what.
Ill make you a very simple fair deal, if you provide me with your business client base information to me

I will bring my game business to your cloud service.

I think this is a fair deal dont you think?

After all my clients trust and privacy agreement in your hands, they pay the bills and keep my business afloat.
so if you do the same to me we be doing a fair agreement.

I think it is fair, I trust you with my most precious treasure and you do the same, right?

this way we both bonded in even trust .

because the otherway you ask which is me blindly handing over to you my most precious treasure and receiving nothing in returned I dont think is a fair deal at all.

unless you used to this kind of deals. hand me all you got and just trust my words.
remember this is 2015, all the handshake honorable deals, aswell of “I give you my word” deals are very rare almost non existent now adays.
what does the bank does when you go and get a loan? exactly right. you most likely sign a property over as collateral. even trade, protection for both parties.
business is business and its got to be well and evenly dealted between both parties since both going to benefit equally…

I am pretty sure you understand that, right?

anyways,

I dont expect you to reply back, or give me another fair trade deal option.
I think we going way out of your actual thread post forum topic.

I dont want you to feel I am hijacking your thread, so I will stop right here.

Ithink I got to know your way of thinking and business model pretty straight by now.
so will not expect a different solution to the concerns of why at least myself do not trust you with my business.
sorry. nothing personal.

you do your way and I do it my way,

best of luck to you.

cheers