Should UNET rates be lowered, so Indie devs can actually use Multiplayer?

A lot of the Indie developers put in a huge amount of man hours to help Unity fix their online package and they repay them with insane rates.

Below, you can see creating a demo CCGKit game, using default settings.

What Unity wants to make this game LIVE

- $ 674 per month at 25% capacity
- $2698 per month at 100% capacity

How many Indie developers are going to make the mistake of turning this on and having their lives ruined?

View Screenshot
http://www.zuluhotel.com/unityprice.png

 

The rates are perfectly reasonable when it comes to running a dedicated server for your game. Dedicated servers aren't cheap.

 

So your question is, shouldn't the price be lowered because it's more than you'd like to pay? I wish everything in life worked that way

Seriously though, maybe shop around and check the alternatives? Perhaps this isn't the right solution for your game and something else would be more suitable.

 

The question should be:

How can an Indie person be able to create an IOS game, maybe bring in $1000 in sales per month and be able to have it multiplayer?

I am sure SteveJ creates apps and he makes millions on them and can afford to use UNET, but what about the rest?

 

You can have multiplayer without UNET

 

I am wondering what everyone is doing for multiplayer? Besides going to Unreal.

 

@Murgilod, I did not know that. I figured UNET was multiplayer, I have other multiplayer solutions (forge). Where can I read up on doing this?

I am looking at adding multiplayer to my game, but would like to use something that I could afford.

 

iOS provides Game Center matchmaking. If you need lots of people in the same session you can also run your own servers by using the provider you want.

 

You can also use uNet without using Unity's matchmaking services. There are numerous hosting companies out there.

 

Could Unity provide a free hosting service when game creators use their Ad service, in effect Ad revenue would pay for the services used to host the game.

Ideally with the option for players to purchase a season pass to turn off the ads and pay for the service.

Then game developers can focus on write multiplayer games, release them and if they take off look at their options.

 

have you looked at photon cloud? the pricing is very very competitive and its only $0.05 per extra GB on most of the packages. its also very easy to implement, probably your best bet.

but yes, I agree the pricing for UNET is a little excessive, but unity is a company and well within there right to charge what they want. The engine is free after all...

 

You'd need a minimum threshold. After all a dedicated server costs a good deal of money per month.

 

Would it need to be dedicated one per game?

Could a server or set of servers be shared across a range of new games.

Or virtualized across a range of servers, with dynamic bandwidth/processor allocation depending on usage.

With games that become popular and gaining the Ad revenue levels needed to go full server could be migrated/promoted.

 

You could rent a dedicated server or a VPS, and then set up your own server for hosting your game if you want to do it lowest cost.

 

Servers for fast pace action games are expensive. You have said that you will have 50000 MAU playing a fast paced action game.

If you can't make $3000 a month off of 50,000 MAU, you should really reconsider your business plan. That might include not supporting multiplayer.

You also have indicated that you are sending 30 messages per second. That is a huge amount of data. It might be appropriate for a modern FPS shooter, but its not really needed for most indie games. The fact that each player is estimated to use 11GB of data a month should have given you a clue. That's a lot of traffic. You can get around this by building a slower game.

Finally this only refers to traffic that runs through the Unity matchmaker and relay servers. If the amount of money really is a problem, you can always implement a different networking solution. Nothing says you have to use UNet, or that you can't use a hybrid of UNet and some other solution. Its entirely possible to use UNet just for matchmaking, and then connect directly between your machines. Or a variety of other options. All of these are more complex technically, but might work out cheaper.

 

Thanks for the info, I am a big fan of Unity, been around since version 3. I am looking into using multiplayer and wanted to know how other people are handling $. Do u charge x per month for multiplayer? Ads?

I am looking to the Unity Community for your expert advice. What is the best way to implement multiplayer and have it sustain itself.

 

I like that idea and will run some numbers to see if it will pay for it's self.

 

It would be interesting to see if Photon, Forge or brainCloud. Has anyone used any of these and have prices??

 

Not all UNet games use UnityAds. Not all UnityAds games use UNet. Coupling the two services makes no sense.

 

Gotta agree with @BoredMormon, using Unity's calculator it came out at roughtly $300.00 a month for 100,000 users based on an MMORPG.. I think you're seriously over estimating the amount of bandwidth you're going to use in terms of the actual game, unless you're doing something like compressed procedural content updates (or component replication) which is generally quite rare, it's usually just RPC / replication from the authoritive.

Even with RPC's and replication, you could use specific algorithms like time frequency decay / increase to save bandwidth on certain components etc.

It depends on what you'd prefer, either an up front cost or an all in monthly.. Rolling your own solution is far from cheap, I looked into the cost of turning a game into an MMO a while back. So you'll need some decent firewalls like Cisco ASA 5506's for IDS / IPS / Load Balancing / HA / DMZ and decent routers then some servers like Dell T20's which would need some upgrades but price / power ain't bad. You don't need servers, but as quick redundancy is key then hot swap HDD's / PSU's is a good idea.

Finally some business class fibre connections, I specc'd up a 400Mbps (4X 100Mbps) PPPOE lines and it came in at around $320.00 a month w/ 5 - 8K for the hardware. Yes it might sound OTT, but there's other things to consider like patch management / upgrades / websites and media.

Also the solution has to be scalable (it could support 250K concurrent connections), nothing tanks an MMO like users not being able to log in.

So when you factor in Unity pays for hardware / secure systems / 24 hour operations / support / bandwidth and creates an API for you to use it's not such a bad deal is it?

 

Except if I'm not mistaken the Unity Multiplayer service is just a matchmaking and relay service. You would still need to build or find a solution for the host-side of an MMORPG.

 

@ShadowK : dang only 300 a month for 100,000 people? How many hours are these players playing? Doesn't seem like it would take long to hit a gig for some people LOL.

I'm making a MP RTS (W/ Photon) game right now, for the longest I wanted to make an MP game, and RTS seems like it would be the worst in terms of bandwidth, even if it's only 1 on 1... No i wouldn't be using constant syncing positions of troops or anything, I'd just update locations/animations and such with an RPC. Yeah I know all about like if I select 50 troops at once to move them, to do that with a single rpc call. But still, seems like an RTS or even an MMO would be sending out massive amounts of data regardless.
So, 300 a month for 100,000 people isn't bad, if I may ask. How did you come up with them estimations?
I haven't ever really truly understand the calculator things to be honest.. Like what's a MAU.. I know what Concurrent users is though.

 

Last I was aware World of Warcraft was playable on dial-up. Just keep in mind though this is only 1,000 concurrent.

 

I don't know why they limit the max to stuff like that.. Isn't 1,000 the max?
Something tells me it's fairly easy to get 20K, 30K people if it's a popular game online at once.

Even 1,000 people seems like something that could easily be having more than 1,000 people online at once for a decent Indie game.
I didn't see any options a few days ago to go past that. At least photon gives you options to get more than 1,000.
And it's only 185 a month for that 1,000.

But I'm glad to know it's more affordable than I thought things were.

 

A huge amount depends on how you structure your game.

RTS games are pretty high in terms of data use. That's why lockstep and deterministic solutions are typically used instead of synchronisation.

If you are only sending orders, then an RTS suddenly starts to have a very low data use.

 

I'm far from an expert on the matter as I'd always roll my own solution for many reasons and I've never used Unity MP, but AFAIK you use the HLAPI part of the multi-player service API as the authoritive (if that's what you mean by host side?).. There's also a service to host the headless app in their cloud..

I will admit, they don't exactly make it super simple to understand.

@N1warhead

MAU is monthly active users AFAIK and DAU is distinct active users, I've personally only had a deep dive look into solutions like AWS service which I think for a similar sort of setup (to Unity) would cost around $1700.00 a month? @Ryiah is correct in regards to concurrent players, it's only 1,000 (which in all fairness is a fair bit) but it's 100,000 active monthly users if you get what I mean.

My ultimate point was, it's good for a small MMO testing the waters and relatively cheap taking out the sting of the initial investment. But if you think there's any chance your game will REALLY take off then I would avoid using any cloud services and roll your own custom solution..

There are caveats to the setup I suggested, I based it all on Max / Peak.. Issue one is the solution isn't just for the game (patch management, websites etc.) so you'd loose many of the 250K concurrent connections, secondly that's based on an ideal (hypothetical) solution in which realistically the FW's probably would fall over as they constantly got pounded, ideally the solution with fat internet pipes and 5 FW's (active / active / LB) would support 80 - 100K concurrent users.

If you're again testing the waters, you could downsize your own solution considerably. I'd highly recommend an active FW pair, but then you could just have two servers also in HA with a couple of routers at the front end.. Including support for the devices all in you're probably closer to 3K, which is hefty but manageable (again I based my calcs on a lot of other factors)..

Although factor in the cost difference, it is FAR cheaper to roll your own in the long run.. But again, it's that initial upfront cost to factor in.

 

Daily Active Users. (unique individuals per day) - MAU (unique individuals per month). The correlation of those numbers is very telling about a game. (and a few others).

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It probably should be noted, that the calculator is just providing a ballpark estimate based on limited information. Ultimately you being charged $0.49 per GB. So actual player/engagement numbers could vary wildly depending on messages, content and session length.

 

Well tomato / tomarto and all that, plus unless the Unity dev is wrong it's exactly what I said it is (besides from the distinct daily active users as well).. I knew I saw a breakdown of terminology / calculations. I managed to find it:

https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/doubts-with-unet-pricing.392179/#post-2561984

Although I'm not sure what your trying to add? It is of course obvious that it'll vary wildly dependant on the game, there are of course some factors you can control to somewhat offset the amount.

 

No, he is correct, they are two separate things, DAU = Daily Active Users, distinct (in the way he is presenting it) users is estimate of the percent of users sessions given an average DAU. DAU is a real number, distinct is a derived estimation.

Not adding to what you are saying, but some the prior comments were talking in terms of the amount actual players, which in and of itself isn't a strong metric. Ultimately it is bandwidth. (Hence the little "----")

 

Haha, I assume no one.

What exactly are you trying to do? Do you actually need dedicated servers? Have you looked at Game Center or Game Kit or whatever it's called now for iOS, or its equivalent for Android?

 

Really interesting thread! Many CCG Kit users reach me about this very same point, so I would like to provide some notes in addition to the excellent comments already made:

- As @zombiegorilla points out, the Unity Services calculator is providing a ballpark estimate based on limited information. Many people expect their game to be played by thousands of users simultaneously when that is, realistically, not going to happen (or, to put it another way, if your server costs are not offset by your game's revenue with that number of players, you have an entirely different kind of problem). Also, and specifically for multiplayer turn-based card games, the actual amount of information that needs to be sent across the network is pretty small. All this needs to be factored into the final bandwidth calculation.

- Many times, it seems like the decision between Unity Services and a dedicated server is only based on cost. But there is also a very important factor to consider: do you want player-hosted games or need authoritative, server-side logic instead? Because if you need the logic to happen on an independent server, you cannot use Unity Services in the first place. This is precisely one of the reasons why I created Master Server Kit: to provide a way to to have a UNET-based game running on a dedicated server setup without writing your own authentication, storage and matchmaking systems.

- The option of going with a dedicated server sounds very attractive when you consider the fact you can find a cheap VPS for $5/month. Unfortunately, as useful as that option is for development purposes, it is just not going to cut it for any decently-sized game. You will need a much more powerful dedicated server, plus the technical staff/knowledge needed to keep it running it 24/7. Which is not that cheap, and something you do not even have to consider with Unity Services.

Basically, what I want to emphasize is that going with a third-party solution vs. rolling your own is not such a simple decision: there are many considerations to be made, both technical and business-related.

 

My ideal setup would be MP for IOS, Android, PC and Mac. Meaning you can play any person on any machine. I am not sure if that can be done.

What about having a dedicated system / hosted solution that ONLY did match making. Once match, pass off control to those players (server/game mode on 1 machine).

 

Thanks for posting as I was not aware of the Master Server Kit. I have bought most of the multiplayer packages (uMMORPG, uMOBA and MP frameworks) and I really need something that is simple and easy to implement. As I am learning the MP stuff, the Master Server Kit might be what I am looking for. Is it the same as CCGKitServer.zip?

I have no idea how many people will buy my game, how many will continue to play and are people willing to pay extra to play online? I would like to have MP support without having it cost me a lot.

 

It is not the same. The server included in CCG Kit provides authentication and storage facilities (players can log in and have a remote collection of cards, which they can expand by purchasing card packs). It is provided as a reference example on how this type of functionality, common in digital CCGs, can be implemented.

Master Server Kit goes beyond that and is not tied to CCGs. It is a complete solution that provides useful, general backend functionality such as authentication, storage and matchmaking for UNET-based games running on a dedicated server setup. You can find the official documentation here, and you can also reach me if you have any question.