You will soon be able to sell physical products through your apps and games, hooked up to the Shopify ecommerce platform. Integration provided by Unity!
See here, video should start right at the correct point…
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Yeah I saw this today on PocketGamer. Interesting concept, would be great for selling game merchandise through your game 
I especially like the rewards/achievement based options of unlocking goodies based on a players progress. If my game proves popular enough, I’ll certainly be getting some nice merchandise created.
There are various fulfillment services and print-on-demand options for shopify as plugins, which could allow someone to print to t-shirts, posters of game art, frame art of screenshots/wallpapers, and various other stuff. Could be quite cool.
Hey I’m actually working on the Unity SDK at Shopify if you have any questions:
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Wow cool, thanks.
Hi Mikko. I’ve posted this question elsewhere, but just discovered this thread. Can you respond to my Shopify concerns?
I was going to create an ecommerce app for a physical product that I am launching, but decided that Unity would be better for the following reasons:
- load times - I don’t mind a 5-10 second load time as we are creating a cooperative type of commerce, i.e. users own the company and therefore shouldn’t mind a few seconds to get into the experience
- battery life - I know a game engine is constantly running as opposed to an event-driven app engine, but our users will not be spending so much time inside our experience that this should matter too much
The upside of using Unity will be a uniquely gamified commerce experience (leaderboards, level up, missions, etc.) . So this post is not too long, I won’t go further into that now.
My main questions are:
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Shopify has just launched something called the Unity Buy SDK. It allows developers to sell physical products inside a Unity game. I do not think the Shopify solution will be robust enough as I need an ability for users to sort and filter search results. More significantly, I want users to have their own storefront (think marketplaces like Ebay, Etsy, Amazon). Is there a way for me to setup an ecommerce platform with robust features like this and importantly – users will not need to leave the experience/environment I’m creating?
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My product is a “platform product”. In other words, it is a product that users can customize with their own designs. Though my product is not a t-shirt, we can use that for an example. I would like to create an interface where users can create or upload their own designs to a personal storefront in our marketplace. If it sells, we manufacture/ship the product and the creator gets paid. This will require the user to create a “sellers” account, which I’m thinking could be the same account that a regular store shopper sets up to make a purchase, but also have a bank account attached to receive funds from any product sales and monthly reports on how their store is doing. Is it possible to create something like this with Unity?
As far as I know the shopping experience is most likely entirely up to you to implement using normal unity methods. The only part shopify handles likely is a shopping cart and a checkout procedure.?
I’m pretty sure that Shopify will not be adequate given the importance of sorting and filtering search results. Looking into Wordpress/Woocommerce for more customization potential.
Please excuse my ignorance, but what do mean by normal unity methods?
That’s false. If you’re talking about a shopify WEBSITE that runs on the shopify platform, shopify is cutting edge and very modern and capable of all manner of filtering and shopping experiences. But we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about shopping INSIDE of a unity app, which is very different, and does mean you have to implement your ‘store’ and how the store functions entirely on your own.
Seems like a good idea integrating this into my Simple IAP System asset as an additional payment platform…
What is false imaginaryhuman?