What is Reddit's opinion of
PlayFab?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
37 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
Any multiplayer games with matchmaking requires a server.
P2P-based networking and server-authorized networking is a very different beast. Switching between the 2 requires some overhaul and tons of resources.
They can very well relies on Steamworks, PlayFab or other 3rd party multiplayer services for networking, they're supposed to be cheap indie studios after all. You think Steam will release the multiplayer services to be used (and even copied by epic) that easily?
Do I understand correctly that this is an alternative to something like https://playfab.com/ for example?
If so - that's interesting. :) What features from playfab (and I assume there are other services like it) do you intend to do? Any that you probably won't be implementing?
Hey,
To me it sounds like what you are searching for is a lobby server. A server that is responsible for creating games, letting players join, and starting a game. Please let me know if I misunderstood.
To achieve this, you can go your own way ( as in code from scratch), or use some open source solutions (like https://github.com/openlobby/openlobby-server or https://github.com/flackr/lobby). Once enough players are in a room, you can spawn a game instance where you let them play.
I personally would try to find an open source project that fits my needs. You can gain insight by seeing how they tackled issues, and maybe even discover solutions to issues you didn’t even forsee.
You can also checkout azure playfab, they offer a whole suite of game related services, like lobbies, for free until 100k monthly active users(https://playfab.com/pricing/). This could get you to market faster but might be costly if you go over the number of users.
Hope it helps, and let me know if you have any questions.
>That's not what I asked, I asked what Microsoft's end goal is.
To make money.
Playfab doesn't have anything to do with game streaming or even Crackdown-style cloud-accelerated gaming.
It's middleware for building cloud backends for service-based games. Mostly used so far for mobile games (which almost universally need some kind of backend service due to the nature of the mobile games industry and how monetization works on those platforms).
I don't know what kind of answer you expect. But if you want something quick and fast you can use one of so called BaaS (Backend as a service) options.
It will save you ton of development time with, it will scale well, great uptime... but you will probably be limited in some other way (flexibility, pricing...)
Two providers from top of my head:
If you don't want to pay you can check their documentation and design API based on your needs. I think what they are doing is pretty flexible.
The posting guidelines say that shameless self-promotion is a go, so:
PlayFab is my startup; we're taking Uber Entertainment's backend and game operations platform (Ubernet) and turning it into a product that any developer can use. We'd love feedback from you guys, especially:
- Would you use our service?
- If not, what do you need that we don't have?
- Are you more likely to use a backend/game operations service created by former game developers?
- If PlayFab looks interesting to you, what specifically interests you and what would you want to see more information on?
We're working on improving our getting started materials, and we want to make our website and overall docs/messaging more developer-focused and less investor/press focused, since we care more about giving game devs what they need at this point.
Thanks for looking!
This got me thinking so I went looking and from what I can tell it doesn't connect to Steam, but it does attempt to call an API from playfab.com which from a quick google search is a Microsoft game client API. I tried going to playfab.com but that's blocked on my work internet, so likely Melvor can't launch the client without that API call completing successfully.
Really unfortunate :(
They use playfab (https://playfab.com/) which is what Rainbow Six Siege and others use so it isn't a problem with the infrastructure itself. It's a problem with how their services communicate and use those servers that needs to be fixed.
Lol what they use isn't cheap at all. They use PlayFab which is used by a lot of different games like Rainbox Six Siege. Pretty sure they didn't pay much at all since its owned by Microsoft. It is the first time they've used this so there are definitely some kinks to work out. Check it out here: https://playfab.com/. It is some pretty cool technology if you're into something like that.
>I have faith that one day we will be able to effortlessly make a single player game multiplayer, I just don’t know if Unity is the right company to do it.
>
>If Microsoft develops their own game engine I could see it integrating with Azure or whatever they use for Xbox live and letting indie devs use Xbox as an itch.io type thing to share and try other indie dev games.
What about PlayFab Multiplayer services. Are they any good ? PlayFab was acquired by Microsoft.
Well they advertise azure playfab on the main loading screens, https://playfab.com/ , so 1. playfab sux; 2. it’s been implemented badly, or; 3. they are mixing its capabilities and using their own legacy tech
It’s based on unreal engine... which I guess is better than frostbite ( anthem ).
As for lag: well maybe the geolocation is screwed for both client matchmaking and backend ops? I’m in Australia, on Xbox , and the few multiplayer sessions I’ve had that worked, all had the red “ bad network” icons appearing. This doesn’t happen with local players on local servers for me, so its a bit of a red flag as to how their NetCode works
Ya I read there were cross platform matchmaking problems in demo, but never tried myself. This is all offloaded on Microsoft’s platform tho.
https://playfab.com Cross Network Identity and Data with Multiplayer services listed right below that. There is a Playfab logo at the start of the game if you’re skeptical of usage.
Heres a helpful list of games that are usign the very same Azure backend that Outriders is built on, you've probably heard of a few:
https://playfab.com/runs-on-playfab/
Rainbowseige six
Minecraft
Sea of Thieves
Forza Horizon 4
All of halo
Doom Eternal
etc.
​
Happy?
Shout out to https://twitter.com/SnakeFishin put in alot of work uncovering all this!
>Great read, alot of information on AI's future in gaming, Fighting online toxicity, xCloud, and more!
Shout out to https://twitter.com/SnakeFishin put in alot of work uncovering all this!
Sources :
>Great read, alot of information on AI's future in gaming, Fighting online toxicity, xCloud, and more!
From the recent Q&A stream, answered by Martial Bossard, Lead Software Engineer at Asobo Studios:
Regarding a pre-download:
Well, it's a different distribution method that what people are used to.
Day 1, you get the core of the Sim. Then, users will download all content using PlayFab https://playfab.com/ (Microsoft Azure).
It's a unified platform, allows users to cherry-pick content. The Marketplace will be incorporated into PlayFab as well. The PlayFab content manager allows users to choose what to download, delete and organize.
So, when you launch the sim for the first time, you'll download what you've paid for based on which of the 3 versions was purchased.
End of his answer.
So, it’s not an all or nothing situation. Most of the scenery data is streamed while you are flying in the sim.
From the recent Q&A stream, answered by Martial Bossard, Lead Software Engineer at Asobo Studios:
Regarding a pre-download:
Well, it's a different distribution method that what people are used to.
Day 1, you get the core of the Sim. Then, users will download all content using PlayFab https://playfab.com/ (Microsoft Azure).
It's a unified platform, allows users to cherry-pick content. The Marketplace will be incorporated into PlayFab as well. The PlayFab content manager allows users to choose what to download, delete and organize.
So, when you launch the sim for the first time, you'll download what you've paid for based on which of the 3 versions was purchased.
End of his answer.
So, it’s not an all or nothing situation. Most of the scenery data is streamed while you are flying in the sim.
From the Q&A earlier today, answered by Martial Bossard, Lead Software Engineer at Asobo Studios:
Yes... well, it's a different distribution method that what people are used to. Day 1, you get the core of the Sim. Then, users will download all content using PlayFab https://playfab.com/ (Microsoft Azure)
It's a unified platform, allows users to cherry-pick content. The Marketplace will be incorporated into PlayFab as well. The PlayFab content manager allows users to choose what to download, delete and organize.
So, when you launch the sim for the first time, you'll download what you've paid for based on which of the 3 versions was purchased.
Great questions. Hopefully I can shed some light.
- Why we require registration? We actually don't require it. You can just click "Play Offline" next to the Steam icon to continue to use Aim Lab with your Steam username. Some features will be unavailable (like submitting to leaderboards and syncing your data across devices) without an account. There were a few reasons for why we added registration. Some users had complained they shared Steam accounts with family members and wanted to be able to have separate profiles to not co-mingle data. Others wanted to be able to sync their data across different computers. And since we are expanding to platforms beyond Steam, we need to be able to have a centralized login system. Especially for uploading/downloading community made content off of the Steam platform. Again, we left this optional. If you don't want to create an account, you don't have to.
- Let me say up front, no third party has access to data on our servers. We also do not sell or share data with any third party. Login information actually isn't even stored on our servers, we use Playfab (https://playfab.com/) as many other popular game titles do (R6 Siege, Sea of Thieves, etc). Registered users can actually download their gameplay data that is stored on our servers directly in Aim Lab, to run their own analyses or whatever they want to do with it. The same data is stored locally on your computer (which you can wipe with an option in Aim Lab), which is what powers the graphs/charts when you choose the Play Offline option mentioned above. Our data science team has access to all scores/performance data in Aim Lab that you would see if you downloaded your own data dump.
I hope this helps answer your questions, but if not, ask away.
you basically need to maintain the game state at the backend and share it and keep it in sync across all the player connection in a particular game room.
There are dedicated services which cater to multiplayer games and wrap all the above complex functionality in easy to integrate APIs, one of them is https://playfab.com
PlayFab recently updated their pricing scheme, and their free tier even provides for some free server access. I'm going to be integrating them with my own multiplayer game later this month.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/playfab/sdks/unreal/quickstart
Playfab is free during development. Their documentation is good, their forums are active and observed by their devs so any questions you might have will be answered.
Basically the price i told you includes game features (leaderboards,economy management,player profiles etc), analytics,cloud code and more. You can find out more here: https://playfab.com/pricing/#pricing_details_all
Now the thing is that you said you want Real time Servers (lobbies,matchmaking etc) to deploy your game. The price you pay in Playfab does not include the costs to run a real-time server. Since i have no experience in that field, i can't tell you the exact price you'll pay every month.
Create an account in playfab and ask their forums if they support real time servers. Last time i checked it was in their roadmap but i'm not sure if they've added as a feature yet.
If they don't, you'll have to use Photon Engine. Playfab provided support and documentation on how to merge the two services.
Before making a decision, I still think you should check out Braincloud aswell. Especially if you're working in a small budget, braincloud has really the most flexible pricing in a service.
Yes, we used GameSparks for a while but it started getting outrageously expensive. We're more than happy with using PlayFab now. They're fantastic and will probably handle all your needs. It's a Microsoft company so we use their Azure hosting instead of Amazon GameLift
As long as you are sticking with the essentials tier, the cost is free with no MAU limit. You can see some more info about the limits of this tier if you set up a free account and check out the limits page (some detail: https://playfab.com/limits/).
Can you explain the free plan of PlayFab? What are the limits? There is no information about MAU, simultaneous connections, bandwidth or crud operation limits here: https://playfab.com/pricing/#plan-essentials-desktop
> Has anyone used a playfab?
They did worse. We spent months setting up PF only to find there was a hidden $300/mo minimum that was in the contract, but not on the website. After an argument, this was disclosed on their website a day later. Last I checked, PF is the same price as GS now and still has less restrictions than PF (I'm a current GS user and have used both). GS essentially saved us ... after a 150-hour port to them.
> I know playfab is paying $ 100 a month.
Since I last used it, it seems like there's a new $99 indie tier @ https://playfab.com/pricing/ -- good for them. Keep an eye out for those limitations, though, unless the indie program has no restrictions. When I used it, I was limited to only 25 stats, for example. On GS, we have 100s of stats and can't even compare, looking back. I once was testing dynamic stats on PF and filled up 25 slots -- I couldn't figure out how to delete them. I asked PF, and they told me to make a new game app. It was a bit ridiculous.
Then when I finally got to messaging in PF, they told me to use Photon for messaging (or some ghetto way with a 2-minute polling. If a user invited you to a game, it'd take up to 2 mins to get that invite). Then Photon's core SDK doesn't have messaging, it's an add-on service for an additional monthly fee.
TL;DR: PF lost our trust (the $300/mo minimum thing and their limited "freemium-like" pay-to-unlock features with inability delete your capped limits (like stats). HOWEVER! I heard they improved a lot, lately, and that was about 1.5 years ago. So take my experience with a grain of salt, as it may not be your own. However, the trust will be lost forever from what happened to us earlier.
There are a few things to note here. One of them is that you are far from the only one; there are a few services out there that do something similar (and maybe even more). Namely Playfab, GameSparks (owned by Amazon), Player.IO and a few others...
They are complicated in certain aspects but easy to deal with in other aspects. However they all come with a free tier.
I'd say if you really want to stand out, you gotta make it far simpler and easier to use than these platforms. Perhaps even offer a free server hosting option for build instances. This is one of the major things the market lacks at the moment. If you are making a multiplayer and need to run a server and that server is something like a Unity instance or Unreal instance you are stuck with Amazon, Microsoft or Google for hosting, if you want to test for free. They provide a free tier for 1 year with limited options and then you gotta pay. But you gotta sign up with a CC. Otherwise, you gotta pay to upload your build to any other hosting service.
Note however that PlayFab currently offers a hosting service (I think it isn't free and testing is exclusive to certain members) and is based on AWS.
What terms were you offering Improbable in order to be a registered, approved partner?
Are companies like playfab.com now in breach of your new TOS because they happen to show a Unity logo along with all the other platforms they work with?
> if they used the Unity logo, and trademarked names/terms in their materials (which I think they did in ads), then they were claiming affiliation.
Yeah, it doesn't though, does it? Using the logo of a platform/SDk/service etc. in the computer world is standard shorthand for 'interoperability' not 'affiliation'.
Here's PlayFab (BaaS, they have a Unity SDK) ... check the bottom of the page. They're not a listed partner of Unity so presumably they're now in breach of the new TOS all because Unity are being petty about use of their logo.
> does unity have a built in leaderboard system?
No
> if so does it work the same with whatever platform your game is played on? if i end up having to use a different leaderboard system for steam and google play, do they work with each other, or would my game have 2 completely separate leaderboards? (obviously i don't want that).
Depends entirely on your implementation.
Assuming you dont want to reinvent the wheel and depending on the features you want you could give Playfab a try. I have only tried it once but it was pretty easy to use and I think it has free cross-platform leaderboards (Among other features).
I would recommend PlayFab (https://playfab.com/). I'm also fairly new to using leaderboards and saving data to a server rather than locally, so maybe there are other better options that I'm not familiar with, but PlayFab has worked really well for me for my past 2 games.
I think you can use a custom username/pass combo, or an email address, or a custom-made ID, or a mobile device ID, or various other methods to identify/store/track unique players over time. I say "I think" because I've only actually used the mobile device ID technique for my games (all iOS and Android games only). But I know there are other options.
It is completely free up to a point. The free stuff has limits to how many players you can support, how big of a save file you store, how many leaderboards you can set up, etc. But you won't hit these limits unless your game is pretty successful.
As I mentioned, I only use this service for exactly what you need - save files and leaderboards. And it is fairly easy to set up. So it sounds like a good option for you. There is plenty of documentation on their site for how to implement and use it with Unity.
I believe there was a time that Unity required a pro licence in order to use sockets, but fairly certain that's a thing of the past. Especially since I've run tests sending randomly generated maps and login details using sockets from my server to the Unity client.
So yes, the standard C# libraries should do fine.
Alternatively, Photon and PlayFab both offer a lot of multiplayer and backend management services that could serve you pretty well and have integrations into Unity. I've played around with both of them, but I'm a sucker for designing my own custom code and building it all up myself.
It's fairly unlikely I can point you to a web host, but I can give you the questions you'll need to ask;
- Do they support the language you'll be designing the website in? Not sure whether you'll be building it from scratch or whether you have a piece of web software in mind.
- Do they provide the database you want to use? MySQL will be the most likely database provided.
- Where in the world is the website hosted? This can relate to personal lag for you or lag for your player base.
As an alternative, it might be worth you looking into PlayFab who have a full management system for games that integrates into Unity and handles a lot of the background stuff.
Well...what frog is saying is correct, but if you didn't already understand that...then it's going to be a pretty complex rabbit hole. At the end of the rabbit hole you will be a much better developer, but the hole is very deep. I really suggest you use one of the backend services that integrate with Unity. For example Kii or Playfab. They are both good, but I think Playfab is easier to use and is more targeted towards game developers. You can build the feature you're talking about within an hour...starting from almost 0 knowledge. And as long as your game isn't a smash hit, the service will be free. The service is going to try and solve every problem under the sun, but just ignore all that...look for a feature called titledata...stick your variable in there...and let users change it. https://playfab.com/
You could use one of the many mobile backends. Playfab is free, so I suggest you look at that.
I haven't used playfab personally, but I've used GameSparks. Playfab is free though.
That's an impressive transition to make. This is pretty exciting news as I was just wondering what solution I want to go with for solving these kinds of problems.
The limits look pretty reasonable: https://playfab.com/limits/
Am I to assume each account can have multiple games associated with it and these limits are per-game? Or are those limits account-wide?
Still, I'm worried about it becoming saturated and perhaps the quality of the service degrading. How confident are y'all in providing this service for the long-run?
Multiple services have popped up to service this need and related ones on different ways. To my knowledge at least there's not yet a clear winner, but then I mostly work on single player or local multiplayer so I may be out of the loop on the answer. I do have a couple of leads to look into though.
A few months ago I met the founder of https://playfab.com - seems legit, though I haven't used it.
A service called player.IO was used in our college game club to handle matchmaking for a few projects. It seems Yahoo bought them up, but otherwise still exists under the new branding. Not sure how the acquisition may have affected the terms or services.
Good question. I'll be keeping an eye on other answers in the thread.