Key Concepts

• A Game Account is the game state of a player. Multiple devices can connect to it using various credentials.

Overview

When a player opens the game for the first time, anonymous credentials are automatically generated and bound to their device. This allows the player to access their Game Account and keep their progress, even if they don't add other means of authentication.

Initially, this works well, as it allows the player to get started with the game right away and keeps the initial friction small by not requiring users to manually create an Account just to try out the game. There is a brief section at the end of this article on the specifics of how the credentials get stored.

The anonymous credentials, however, have some limitations, and you may want to encourage players to add other forms of authentication. Namely:

• Lost Credentials - The credentials can be lost if the user loses or changes their mobile device.
• No Multi-Device Access - Anonymous credentials don't allow joining multiple devices to access the same Game Account.

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The LiveOps Dashboard has tools to reconnect lost Accounts on the player page. See Introduction to the LiveOps Dashboard for more.

To circumvent these issues and for further advantages, there are two possible solutions:

• Social Logins
• Company IDs

We'll go into more detail about them in the sections below.

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Multiple of these methods can be in use at the same time! It is expected that the players start out with the anonymous authentication and are then encouraged to attach another authentication methods.

Social Logins

The primary benefits of social logins are to provide the players with a more persistent way to store their credentials and allow connecting multiple devices to the same Game Account. Even if they lose their phone and the anonymous authentication is lost with it, they will be able to reconnect to their existing Game Account by logging in with their social login. Similarly, by connecting to their social account from multiple devices, all the devices can be linked to the same Game Account.

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See the Getting Started with Social Logins for more information on how to start implementing social logins.

Still, social logins have some limitations:

• Platform-Specific Limitations - Many of the methods are platform-specific and don't allow connecting, for example, Android and iOS devices to the same Game Account.
• Single Game Limitation - The login only works within a single game and connecting the player profiles across a portfolio of games is not possible.
• Web Platform Challenges - For the web platform, we are not aware of good out-of-the-box solutions.

To address these shortcomings, we're creating the Company IDs.

Company IDs

Upcoming Feature

The Company IDs feature is still being developed by Metaplay and is currently in private beta. If you wish to access the feature, please contact us directly to talk about this.

Metaplay's Company ID is a feature that enables companies to establish a company-wide user profile for players across multiple games. It is a white-label product and allows for direct relationships with players, self-service account recovery, cross-platform play, cross-promotion between games, out-of-app purchases, and Web3/NFT features.

The feature is designed to address the following use cases:

• Direct Relationship with Players - Company IDs allow companies to collect emails, Discord IDs, and other information to form a direct relationship with customers for re-engagement campaigns, advertising, and other purposes. This is especially useful for companies that want to do community management and need to work around the anonymization that Google and Apple do on their platforms.
• Self-Service Account Recovery - Company IDs offer a self-service account recovery feature, reducing support load and providing a better experience for players. Lost accounts are traditionally the biggest source of support requests and take manual effort to solve. The self-service creates both a better experience for the players and cuts down customer support costs.
• Cross-Platform Play - Company IDs allow players to continue their progress on mobile, PC, web, and other platforms. This is especially important for players who have acquired paid content or have an active subscription on one platform and still would like to play the game on another.
• Cross-Promotion Between Games - Company IDs enable cross-promotion between games, such as giving conditional rewards in one game for progressing far enough in another. Since the user profile exists between games, it becomes possible to encourage players to try out other games in the company's portfolio, increasing engagement and user retention.
• Out-of-App Purchases - Company IDs allow companies to offer out-of-app purchases with a smaller commission in purchases and the ability to query the game server to show targeted offers to players based on their actual game progression. This enables you to monetize your games more effectively while providing a better experience to your players.
• Web3/NFT Features - Company IDs support Web3/NFT features, including wallet binding, game server synchronization of wallet contents, tracking/modifying NFT metadata, and more.
• Publish Games on the Web (with Authentication) - Company IDs enable you to publish your games on the web by providing a way for the players to authenticate themselves using a variety of 3rd party providers such as Google, Discord, and others. Additionally, the Metaplay SDK also makes it easier to publish games on the web by fixing many shortcomings of Unity’s support for the platform.

Platform-Specific Behavior for Anonymous Credentials

The credentials that are generated automatically when a player first enters the game are persisted in a platform-specific manner:

• Android Credential Storage - On Android, Block Store is used. This retains the credentials across application reinstalls. Credentials are not automatically transferred across multiple devices.
• iOS Credential Storage - On iOS, Apple's Keychain is used. This retains the credentials on application reinstalls. Credentials are not automatically transferred across multiple devices.
• WebGL Credential Storage - On WebGL, the browser's localStorage is used. Note that this storage is not very durable and in production a properly persistent solution like Company IDs is practically required.
• Other Platforms Credential Storage - On other platforms, the file system is used.

Removing Player Credentials

You might want to be able to remove a Game Account from a device for debugging purposes, or simply to let a player remove their credentials and create a new anonymous Account when re-opening the app. You can do this by Using the LiveOps Dashboard, where you can remove all login tokens from the player you wish to remove the credentials from. Upon a new connection, a new Game Account will be created for the player.

If you wish to do this through code, you can simply call the following method:

  await CredentialStore.ClearGuestCredentialsAsync()

Android Devices

If want to delete the local data for an Android device, you can go to the app's App Info preferences page, either navigating from the Apps section or tapping and holding your app's icon and clicking App Info. Once there, click Storage & cache and select Clear Storage. This will remove the application token on the phone's filesystem and reset their credentials.

iOs Devices

If you're using iOs, you have to use either the Dashboard or the ClearGuestCredentialsAsync() method described previously. The credentials are stored in the device's Keychain and cannot be removed manually.

Further Reading

To get started with social logins, see Getting Started with Social Logins.