Unity Multiplayer Launch FAQ (March 2016)

Hi. We’re sorry we haven’t been able to respond quickly; a lot of us are at GDC! To address comments so far:

What did you launch?
On March 15, we announced that Multiplayer is no longer in preview, and is ready to support live games. For development purposes, you get 20 CCU (200 if you have Pro). If you need more, the limit is removed and we’ll charge $0.49GB for traffic that travels through Unity infrastructure (Matchmaker, Relay Server)

Why do I need a Pro License to “Go Live”?
We are improving our backend system so that we can recognize users on a Personal edition license (free) who have a payment instrument (credit card) on file. Until then, we have to use Pro as a proxy, else we risk providing service with no ability to recover. If you are especially passionate and serious about going live with your game right now, and are on a free account, direct message me, and we’ll work something out.

What is the pricing philosophy behind Unity Multiplayer?
Fairness, meaning you pay for what you use. Right now, that means bandwidth. Well, infrastructure too, but it’s mostly bandwidth. Fairness also means that we need to sustain ourselves because bandwidth isn’t free. Our pricing model isn’t fancy. We get a bill for web services and add some extra on top; that’s what we charging for.

Why do you charge on a bandwidth basis?
It’s fair. We thought about charging on per CCU basis because it’s MUCH easier to estimate and communicate costs to you, our customers. But we don’t think it’s fair. It disadvantages projects that are not network intensive and/or highly network optimized. These are things that we want to REWARD because it’s good for our costs, your costs, and helps ensure an optimal player’s experience.

Why are you so expensive?
We’re actually pretty cheap. The calculator sucks and we need to refactor it. The challenge is that it’s hard to estimate your costs on a per bandwidth basis without knowing exactly how your game works. The calculator has default values but if we can’t explain what they mean, it’s useless. Also, based on input we’ve seen into the calculator so far, most have extremely optimistic CCU estimates. The calculator was always our bandaid but now we’re going to band aid over it soon. Our intent is to develop a dashboard that can regression your in-development activity to estimate your expected costs.

But I want to estimate my costs NOW!
Steamdb.info is a pretty good place to sanity check CCU estimates. For other factors… again, it’s hard without knowing your game. Even games within particular genres can vary widely. The calculator defaults currently assumes you’re using a high bandwidth FPS/Shooter type game. Factor down from there. You can use the profiler in the engine to check the packets being sent. An alternative is wireshark which I personally like for networking stuff. There are also OS level tools e.g. Resource Monitor

How much have you charged so far?
Since going live on March 15, all developers in aggregate owe us a total of $3.17, supporting 81K player matches.

Why don’t you use NAT punch through?
One of the issues with our legacy network system was it’s reliance on NAT punchthrough, which has reliability issues. Depending on various factors like routing hardware involved in a connection and ISP restrictions, the expected success rate is somewhere between 30% and 90%.

For this reason Unity Multiplayer decided to invest in an always available Relay Server, which allows any collection of clients to communicate regardless of factors like these. It’s reliability will be close to 100%.

We do have NAT punchthrough planned for development, however we do not have an ETA on when it will be released. It will be a backup to both reduce costs and latency in cases where it can help, with Relay Server still providing reliable transport when needed.

Can I use Unity Multiplayer without Unity Relay Server and Unity Matchmaking?
Sure! You can continue to use the Low Level and High Level API and stand up your own servers or try NAT punchthrough yourself. At that point, you’re just paying for your Unity License (if you are paying for a Unity License).