Game Developers Conference releases PlayFab product update

Microsoft is firmly committed to serving the game development community, and released a series of new products, updates and new projects at the Microsoft Game Overseas Developer Conference on May 13. The PlayFab team has delivered a series of exciting updates around Multiplayer Services, Party, Experiments, Data Platform and User Generated Content (UGC) services. We have new demos, tech talks, and documentation to help you dive into each update.

Be sure to visit our GDC page . Learn more about game development techniques.

Before sharing our first product update of 2022, we would like to remind developers that we welcome your feedback and let us hear from you. The "Feature Request" section of our forum allows you to post, comment, and vote on ideas from our community. Fixing issues also remains a high priority, so please continue to share your findings in the bugs section of the forum. Thank you for your continued support!

We hope more creators and creators who are using PlayFab to develop and run games will give us feedback, and let us know if our product updates are very helpful to your game's success, or if you want to learn more.

The PlayFab leadership team is continuing our "External Engagement" series of meetings, and we hope to meet more customers to help us understand your needs and goals.

If you are interested in participating, please contact us: PFOutsideInR [e-mail] , or contact us below to discuss more details with the Microsoft Gaming team.

Product update content

• Data Connections (Bring Your Own Storage): We've added the ability to write PlayStream and telemetry events to your own storage account. With the ability to export data from PlayFab to a custom data store, you will be able to take full control of your data in terms of access, scaling, latency, retention and privacy with Azure services. This feature is already in public preview. To learn more about this release, see the blog post "Controlling Data in Your PlayFab Assets Using a Data Connection" .
• Matchmaking: We've added real-time notifications to avoid polling for current status, as well as integration with the new game lobby feature. The updated Matchmaking client SDK with real-time notifications is now in public preview. To learn more, see the Matchmaking documentation and download the SDK to try it out today. Also remember to join our new Game Developers @Azure program, sign up for free access to this new player matching service, and it's available for most games. To learn more, see the blog post Introducing ID@Azure: Your Cloud Journey Starts Today .
• Game Lobby: This is a service that allows players to temporarily group together to coordinate a multiplayer experience, and also supports the ability to search for available lobbies and join. Specifically, it includes member attributes, as well as lobby and search attributes for game scheduling. The new lobby service with real-time notifications is now available to all developers via public preview. To learn more, see the lobby documentation . Also remember to join our new Game Developers @Azure program for free access to this new lobby service in most games. To learn more, see the blog post Introducing ID@Azure: Your Cloud Journey Starts Today .
• UGC General Release (GA): We have updated UGC from Public Preview to General Release (GA). In addition to various API tweaks and bug fixes, we've added Game Manager improvements and features to help developers better manage their UGC catalog of user-generated content. To learn more, see the Increasing Market Engagement with Azure PlayFab UGC video and PlayFab User Generated Content document from GDC.

Upcoming Product Updates

• Game Leaderboards Leaderboards v2: Leaderboards v2 is currently still in limited preview.
• Game Economy Economy v2 public preview coming in Q3 2022! Player inventory and wallets will be available, with support for receipt verification, game bundles, stores, currencies and more in the most popular markets.
• Segmentation Player Segmentation: We will introduce a
  New API for ExportPlayersInSegment as an enhancement to the existing GetPlayersInSegment API. Additionally, we'll make it easier for you to define segments that consist of fixed player lists.

Other product updates since last October

• CloudScript Functions is now fully enabled on Azure. The new and improved CloudScript Functions are now fully available and run entirely on Azure. To learn more, see the blog post Implementing Cloudscript with Azure Functions and the getting started guide .
• A personal preview of the Event Sampling feature: Late last year, we made Event Sampling available as a limited preview. This feature gives you finer control over PlayStream events and Data Ingestion data ingestion. To learn more, see the blog post "Managing Your Events with Event Sampling" and Managing Events Quick Start .
• Unreal GSDK Plugin: We have a new version of the GSDK plugin that makes it easier for you to upload Unreal builds to a Multiplayer Server (MPS). To learn more, see the blog post "New Unreal GSDK plugin simplifies deployment of Azure MPS" and the quickstart .
• New guide article: We published a new article on how to attach the profiler profiler and debug your MPS game server. To learn more, see Additional Profilers .
• Auto Crash Dumps: We've added the ability to enable automatic crash dumps on Windows container-based MPS multiplayer servers. See Crash Dump Collection for related documentation.
• UGC SDK: In November, we released an updated SDK to support the Azure PlayFab UGC public preview. You can read more about this new service and learn how to start a creator community in your game. For its blog announcement, see Announcing Azure PlayFab User Generated Content (Public Preview) . Finally, if your game is running on GameSparks and you're looking for an alternative, our service is there to support no matter what engine, platform, or store you're currently integrating with. If you struggle along the way, our partners Alice and Smith and GameCloud can help you migrate. To learn more, see Migrating GameSparks to Azure PlayFab . To connect with us, find us #migrate-to-playfab on the Discord server .

From now on, join the Game Developer @Azure project and use it for free !

1. Build and operate a real-time game with PlayFab

All Game Developers @Azure members can use the PlayFab Standard plan for free for up to two years starting today. The plan, which normally costs $99/month, includes access to $400/month worth of LiveOps and Insights metrics, as well as Gold Support, which includes forums, support documentation, and case support submissions. Connecting with your current technology stack and using the PlayFab services you need means you can focus on creating great gaming experiences without worrying about server scaling or whether your LiveOps team members have the tools they need.

2. Open the door to cross-platform gaming with PlayFab

To support cross-platform play, members of the Game Developers @Azure program have free* access to PlayFab Party Networking, Voice and Chat, PlayFab Player Matchmaking, and PlayFab Lobby. The usage caps we provide are very generous and are based on the most successful games on PlayFab today. So the free usage cap of these PlayFab services can cover up to 95% of games.

Finally, thanks to all the amazing game creators who built the PlayFab platform with us. Without you, none of this would be possible.

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