Unity Gaming Services: The road to launch in June

Unity Gaming Services products will officially graduate out of open beta this June.

In October of last year, we announced Unity Gaming Services (UGS) as a suite of tools and services built to simplify every developer’s ability to create, host, and manage their games. 

We’ve since launched nine products into open beta and over 54,000 game developers signed up to test the service and UGS tools have been installed into over 6,000 unique game projects. 

Beta was just the first step. The Unity Gaming Services team spent the last six months gathering feedback and refining our offerings. We're excited to support even more developers, and we couldn't have done this without the support of our developer community and all those who explored these tools and gave us their thoughts. 

We’re excited to announce today that our suite of UGS beta products will officially be graduating into full release in June of this year.

Launching a live game is just the beginning. As a developer, in order to deliver on evolving player expectations, you need to pick the right set of services to grow your game, but also choose efficiently and at minimal cost. UGS is a complete set of tools that allows you to meet all of your players' increasingly complex demands.  

Unity Gaming Services unites a host of solutions in one place, working together either as a cohesive toolset, or as a modular set of components to complement your existing tech stack. 

The UGS suite includes a variety of end to end solutions from cloud-based backend, to powerful analytics that give a 360 view of your players, and to full-stack multiplayer solutions unlocking all game genres – all of which are integrated within a monetization platform that powers your success.

Explore our Unity Gaming Services products on our main site here, or learn more about our product suites in our latest blog series: 

• A closer look at Analytics and Player Engagement
• A closer look at Game Backend
• A closer look at Multiplayer 

The beta suite of UGS is officially launching in June of this year. 

What does this mean for you? It's a commitment from Unity that we will continue to support the UGS developer community, and we will continue to update these tools and services to keep up with ever-changing developer and player needs.

If you're a current UGS beta developer, we'll notify you with emails as well as notifications on the Unity Gaming Services Dashboard to inform you of how to ensure your services continue to operate without any interruption of service. Developers using the products will also have access to review their metered billing in advance and if they move into the premium tier of a service, they will receive their first bill for the month of July in August. If you’re new and eager to try UGS products when they launch, sign up here to be notified through email when they’re live. 

Here’s what’s launching in June:

• Analytics: Allows studios to better understand game performance and player behaviors using prebuilt dashboards and visualizations powered by reliable, real-time data.
• Authentication: Allows you to assign an account to players coming into your game and attach all the data generated by the backend products to each player.
• Cloud Code: Allows you to write stateless server-side code on a fully managed infrastructure and isolate your game logic away from the client device. 
• Cloud Save: Allows you to track and store player data including player abilities, statistics, and more, enabling cross-device accounts for your players.
• Economy: Provides you with an easy way to create, manage, and publish an in-game economy system.
• Relay: A service that allows players to connect and enjoy immersive multiplayer gaming – all without needing a dedicated game server.
• Lobby: A flexible solution that connects players in custom private or public rooms to enable great multiplayer gaming experiences.
• Player Engagement and Game Overrides: Enables creators to holistically transform their games after launch. Reduce churn, re-engage lapsed players, and delight loyal fans with fresh in-game experiences. Game Overrides is currently live, as well as its integration with Cloud Content Delivery. More integrations with Game Overrides, including Economy, are coming soon.
• Vivox: Enables an E2E communication solution for multiplayer games on mobile, PC, and Console.

In addition to the upcoming product launches, we will be releasing a new set of tools into beta in June to provide even more support for our developer communities in creating and managing their games. 

For multiplayer developers, we’re excited to be adding self-service functionality to our dedicated game server hosting and Matchmaking services, allowing developers of all sizes to utilize the same tools and services being used by AAA studios worldwide.

Starting June, Multiplay’s dedicated game server hosting and Matchmaking services will be accessible to developers of all sizes. Multiplay is trusted by some of the most successful studios all around the world, bringing resilience and scale to multiplayer gaming infrastructure. The new self-service experience will let you deploy and host your game with ease, allowing you to test and launch your multiplayer experience in no time.

Multiplay enables you to upload and manage your game server builds and scale your server fleets globally. Combined with our new Matchmaker (beta), you’re able to connect players together via a quick-to-setup ruleset. While Matchmaker supports the engines and services of your choice, it is directly integrated with Multiplay out of the box for a deeper experience; managing server allocations, and relaying all the information needed to start a game.

If you’re interested in trying out Multiplay’s dedicated game server hosting or Matchmaking services, register to be kept up to date on when they enter open beta.

Want to be the first to know about when our products go live? Save the date here to be notified as soon as we launch in June!

To stay in the loop with other Unity Gaming Services updates, follow our new UGS channels on Twitter and Facebook or visit our new Unity Gaming Services Forums.