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dan avatar image
dan asked

Best practice for merging Friend Lists from various sources?

Hello there.

I am starting on a turn-based multiplayer game, on mobile, using Play Fab and Photon.

From my previous game I learned a few things...

1) People love cross-platform multiplayer (iOS vs. Android)

2) A few vocal people really, really hate Facebook

3) People love Game Center

With this in mind, the first objective for my new game is to create a robust friend system that can merge various platforms. To elaborate...

1) Player creates account using PlayFab

2) Player can link Facebook and/or Game Center / Google Play account

3) Friends from each system will appear in the PlayFab friends list

I read a number of ways to authenticate and link accounts, but info is conflicting - sometimes the docs say that you can only link Facebook and Steam, sometimes they say you can link Game Center, sometimes they say you should never authenticate with Game Center... I am really baffled.

Does anyone have any experience linking friend lists across systems?

I would love to get a few tips!

Thanks in advance,

Dan

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brendan avatar image
brendan answered

Part of the issue is that this conflates two different concepts - linking accounts and friend lists.

We support linking on all the platforms you mentioned (and more). The issue with Game Center is that we do not yet support their newer, secure authentication model (previously, the only thing we could do was use the Game Center user ID, which isn't secure at all), so we don't recommend using it just yet.

For friends lists, you can add friends to the PlayFab-stored friends list via AddFriends, and you can include friends from Facebook and Steam when you query for friends and friend leaderboards. We do not yet provide integration of Game Center or Google Play friends, however.

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dan avatar image dan commented ·

Thanks for the info, Brendan - that's super helpful.

Questions...

1) Do you plan on adding Game Center and Google Play to the friend query functionality in the near future?

2) Would it be possible to store players' Game Center IDs in their PlayFab profile, and then search for players by GC ID?

3) What benefits does linking accounts actually give? If I link a PlayFab account to Game Center, what functionality is gained?

Cheers,
Dan

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brendan avatar image brendan dan commented ·

In order:

1. We have additional service friend systems on our backlog, including Google, but they're not scheduled currently, so I can't provide a date.

2. We actually provide integration with Game Center for login (ex: https://api.playfab.com/documentation/Client/method/LoginWithGameCenter), but until we update that for Apple's newer secure third-party authentication, I wouldn't really recommend it. If you don't necessarily need it for login specifically, you could use the Generic ID system to add it to accounts, and so look them up that way:

https://api.playfab.com/documentation/Client/method/AddGenericID

https://api.playfab.com/documentation/Client/method/GetPlayFabIDsFromGenericIDs

3. Primarily, it provides you with more ways to log the player into the same account. Mobile games in particular start out by logging players in invisibly, using a device ID or similar. They then incentivize the player to add other auth systems (like Facebook) later, so that the player can then sign in from any device. For some services, we provide additional integrations, as with Steam and Facebook (friends, in particular).

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dan avatar image dan commented ·

Thanks once again, Brendan - that's very helpful info. :D

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kfboelter avatar image
kfboelter answered

Hi @Brendan.

Is this part of Game Center friends already supported?

Thanks in advance!

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brendan avatar image brendan commented ·

We currently provide integration with Facebook and Steam friends. If you would like to see Game Center friends added, your best bet would be to post that to the Feature Requests forum, so that others can 'like' it, to help with prioritization.

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