Explore Unity Gaming Services

You have successfully completed the core game development phase. Moving a game from a local prototype to a published, managed product requires a backend infrastructure. This infrastructure can be provided by Unity Gaming Services (UGS), which is a collection of tools that simplify deployment, monetization, and tracking player performance.

While game development focuses on implementing the game (scripting, setting up scenes, importing assets), moving into the publishing stage requires supporting your game outside of the Unity Editor. UGS helps developers, even solo ones, achieve stability and commercial viability.

For instance, your 3D game might aim to collect all the gems, and your 2D game might focus on surviving as long as possible. If you plan to expand on these mechanics, you may need reliable systems for the following:

• Saving player progress: Ensuring players don't lose progress when closing the game (a core expectation for games).
• Monetization: Implementing revenue streams if you choose a model like free-to-play with in-app purchases (IAP) or ad-supported monetization (common strategies for casual mobile games).
• Data analysis: Understanding how players interact with your rules and difficulty (for example, are players giving up too early because the difficulty curve is too steep?).

Unity Gaming Services is designed to simplify these traditionally complex LiveOps (Live Operations) tasks, which involve managing the game after launch, implementing monetization strategies, and tracking player behavior, engagement, and retention.

Unity Gaming Services offers a suite of tools that can be categorized by their function: building and delivery, monetization and economy, and player engagement and data.

Building and delivery: Unity Build Automation

Unity Build Automation was originally called "Unity Cloud Build". It is a continuous integration service, which automates the process of building, testing, and deploying your Unity projects. It allows you to focus on game creation rather than manual building for every target platform (PC, mobile, web, console).

You can learn more about the actual implementation through the Build Automation documentation or by watching the short tutorial video below:

Player engagement and data: Unity Analytics

Unity Analytics gives you insights into player behavior, engagement, and retention. With player data, developers can make data-driven decisions to optimize their games, enhance player experiences, and potentially increase revenue. For example, if Analytics shows players constantly failing the first level of your Roll-a-Ball game, you know to adjust the early difficulty curve.

You can learn about the actual implementation of Unity Analytics through the Analytics documentation or by watching the short intro video below:

Monetization and commerce: Unity Ads, economy, and user acquisition

Since the games in this pathway may be designed for casual mobile players, it's useful to think about how your game might earn money. UGS provides several tools to help you do this. Below are three common approaches.

1. Unity Ads: Earning money by showing ads

Unity Ads lets you earn revenue by showing short video ads, banners, or rewarded ads in your game. This is one of the most common ways mobile games make money.

ExampleA player watches a rewarded ad to get extra coins or an extra life.

You can learn about the actual implementation of Unity Ads in the Unity Ads documentation.

2. In-app purchases (IAP) and economy: Selling items in your game

Another way mobile games earn money is by selling digital items, currencies, or cosmetics inside the game. Unity splits this into two services:

• In-App Purchase (IAP) handles the actual purchase through the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.
• In-game economy helps you define and manage the items, currencies, and prices in your game all from the cloud; this allows you to make changes without pushing a new app update.

Examples

• Buying a starter pack that includes coins and a special skin
• Buying a time-skip that finishes construction instantly

You can learn more in the IAP documentation, the economy documentation or from this in-depth video tutorial on in-app purchases.

3. User acquisition (UA): Getting new players for your game

User acquisition is simply the process of advertising your game so more people discover it and download it.

This is the opposite of Unity Ads revenue:

• Unity Ads: other people’s ads appear in your game (you earn money).
• User acquisition (UA): your game’s ads appear in other people’s apps (you pay to attract players).

UGS supports this with tools that help you run ad campaigns, understand where your installs are coming from, and measure which ads are performing well.

You can learn more and find additional resources from the user acquisition homepage and Unity’s User Acquisition documentation.

In this tutorial, you learned about key Unity Gaming Services, including Unity Analytics (for data collection), Unity Build Automation (for automated deployment), and Unity Ads (for monetization). You can now recognize these services and summarize their features in the context of game development.

Remember, you’ve only learned about a few of the possible available services. Check out Unity Gaming Services if you want to learn more.