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Confused about pricing?

Xtrentonsmithx
started a topic on Thu, 14 May 2015 at 11:24 AM

I'm a little confused about the pricing of Playfab.

It states that the pricing is all based on how many daily active users someone has.

From what I gathered you can run a multiplayer game through Playfabs servers for free up until 1,000 DAU's and then you start paying .006 per daily active user for premium (which is what I would be using)

And that's it? That's how the pricing works? You're using Playfabs servers to host your game and you simply pay them .006 per DAU to have your game available for multiplayer?

I'm going to be in the process of creating a game for IOS that is basically strictly multiplayer I would obviously need servers for this. I'm just a bit confused about the pricing model. Are there any hidden fees I don't know about? Am I overlooking something?

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Brendan Vanous said on Thu, 14 May 2015 at 5:56 PM

We're trying to make sure our pricing is as simple as we can make it, but I realize that the three parts might be throwing you off. Here's how they break down:

DAU - At the Premium and Publisher levels, this covers the use of all PlayFab API calls (auth, data, purchasing, hosted game logic scripts, etc), and Photon Cloud (running in our private Photon Cloud instance). It also gives you the ability to run custom game servers which are managed by our server wrangler (which provides scale up/down as you need more or less servers, log and output file storage, and general monitoring), and use our matchmaker to direct players to those custom game server instances.

Servers - If you need custom game servers, such as for a first-person shooter, those are billed at cost+10%, as shown in the link.

Support - If you additionally want to have a support contract with us, we have a few options available, as shown in this link.

Apart from games that need low-latency realtime twitch-type action, most titles can use the Photon Cloud combined with Cloud Script for multiplayer. So for those titles (and assuming they don't want a support contract), they would indeed be paying $0.006 per DAU. There are no hidden costs in our service.

Please note that tiers of service and pricing plans may change over time (and specifically, we're always looking for ways to make it cost even less). For the most recent pricing information, please refer to the pricing page in the PlayFab main site.


Brendan Vanous said on Thu, 14 May 2015 at 9:20 PM

2D versus 3D isn't really relevant - what's key to deciding if you need a custom game server is whether you have a need for a server which manages the game's world state in realtime, with a need for minimal latency for turnaround on user actions. So for example, a realtime card game like Hearthstone wouldn't require a custom game server, since card actions don't have much of a latency issue. But a Call of Duty game would require a custom game server, since you need to have the server update the clients with the world state and other players' positions frequently, and with low latency.

For game creation, many members of the PlayFab team have been part of game development projects. Personally, I've been either making games or helping developers make their games better for almost 20 years. However, we are not a contract game development house, if that's what you're asking. We're 100% dedicated to our backend service, and the needs of our development partners.

Brendan


Xtrentonsmithx said on Thu, 14 May 2015 at 10:59 PM

I'm confused then. Say I did need custom servers. They are 500.00 a month to rent but I mean how many daily active users can one server hold? I don't see how anyone could profit if they had to pay for custom servers and .006 per dau I mean how much would 500 a month get me in dau's


Brendan Vanous said on Fri, 15 May 2015 at 12:43 AM

There's no way I can predict that, as I don't know what your custom server code does, exactly. It's your code, so it could be literally anything.

As part of the test tier, we give you access to a fairly standard AWS server model, which you can use to do testing to determine your needs. We can then adjust for you the default server configuration for your title, depending on whether you're more CPU throttled or memory throttled.

For most titles, DAU translates to Concurrent Users (sometimes called Currently Connected Users, or CCU - the peak of connected users you have at any one time) on a ten- or twenty-to-one basis. So 1000 DAU might mean you have a peak of 100 CCU or it might mean 50 - and those are only rough guesses. Depending on your title's retention rate, stickiness, whether you have a strong core community, etc., these could vary quite a bit - those are just some average numbers for the industry in general.

But that said, let's look at a few examples. In both cases, let's assume your server can manage 200 users at a time, your play sessions are 10 minutes long, and the average user plays 3 sessions a day. So that's 30 minutes of connection time per DAU. Distributing the users evenly for the sake of the example (most games have sine wave-like player usage graphs, but the math for that would get pretty complex, so we'll keep it simple), that means one server could host around 9,600 players per day. That means one player is $0.006 for the DAU cost per day, and $0.0017 for the server cost per day (your $500 per month, using a 30 day month). So $0.0077 per day total.

And again, your mileage may vary. Many games we see are able to support more players at a time in a single server - it's down to what the specifics of your game are, and how well optimized your code is.

For a Free-to-Play business model, that means that you need to earn at least $0.0077 ARPDAU to break even on this cost (not counting other costs), which is well below the average for the industry.

For paid titles, the story is even better. If the selling price of the game is $10, even with no other income from IAP or new content, that means a player would have to play the game for around three and a half years at the frequency listed above before you'd hit break even on that player. Games with that kind of retention are exceptionally rare, not to mention popular enough that they have more income pipes than just direct game sales (toys, candy, books, etc.).

Brendan


Xtrentonsmithx said on Fri, 15 May 2015 at 1:14 AM

That's a lot more inviting knowing my 500.00 a month can support up to 9,600 daily active users (give or take) I'm extremely new to multiplayer and server hosting so everything is somewhat new information for me. I realize you don't usually create games and are more of a backend service company but if you are at all interested in creating the game you should contact me personally. It would make sense for you to develope the game if at all possible to blend everything together smoothly. If not then maybe give send some partners my way? I'm currently browsing through elance


Brendan Vanous said on Fri, 15 May 2015 at 1:24 AM

Well again, those numbers are just based on some past games. Not knowing anything about your game or its needs, its impossible to really estimate what you might be able to support per server - it could easily be higher or lower.

For contractors you could work with, there are some great online forums for connecting with folks. I'd recommend using the Gamasutra contractor search system (http://gamasutra.com/contractors/contractor_display.php) to see what you can find.


johntube said on Fri, 15 May 2015 at 8:26 AM

I would just add that other than the DAU limit there is also a limit of API Calls per Tier which is not stated anywhere in the pricing details page of PlayFab website.

The Test Tier (I guess Standard is the same) for instance this limit is 100.000 API calls per day.


Brendan Vanous said on Fri, 15 May 2015 at 8:55 AM

No, the only tier with the 100K API limit per day is test - that's specifically so that you can do all your testing at no cost, while keeping our costs on the test tier manageable. Released titles don't have a daily limit on DAU or API calls, though we are in the process of defining our soft and hard limits (stated in general terms in our ToS) more specifically. To date, we haven't had a problem with a live title making excessive calls (hence, the reason we haven't already pushed out the specifics), as errors of making a call on each frame, etc., have been caught in development. We'll get those specifics out soon, but you can expect that they'll provide plenty of room for normal title usage (averaging a call every few seconds), you'll be fine.


johntube said on Fri, 15 May 2015 at 9:14 AM

@Brendan :

I took a look at Parse's pricing plans : I think averaging a call every few seconds is not enough as Parse is giving 30req/s for free !

And while PlayFab team is [re]working on the Push Notifications, please study the costs and consider if a limit for unique GCM registration IDs per Title should be clearly stated.


Brendan Vanous said on Fri, 15 May 2015 at 9:18 AM

The Parse limit is for the application - adding all activity for all users into one limit. Our limit is per user. We don't have a limit on unique GCM registrations per Title ID.


Xtrentonsmithx said on Fri, 15 May 2015 at 11:19 AM

Anything I should tell the developer to make it my game flow into your system easier? I will be using you guys in the future once my game is created!


Brendan Vanous said on Fri, 15 May 2015 at 11:43 AM

Sure - let your developer know to design for a Web API (REST) based service as the backend. It'll be trivially easy to plug into us, if that's the design.


Brendan Vanous said on Fri, 15 May 2015 at 12:36 PM

(in answer to a question on building for fighting games)

It'll really depend on the specifics. For most high-speed-action fighting games, you'll need to have an authoritative server, so that you minimize latency and prevent player cheating. In that case, you'll need to make sure your developer is conversant with building servers. We can then host that for you in a scalable backend, and provide for the matchmaking. When you onboard your developer, feel free to put him or her in touch with us, and we can talk through details.


flekoun said on Wed, 08 July 2015 at 4:14 AM

Well, so the first 1000 DAU free is gone now?! Is this correct? If we use Premium tier with 0.006$ DAU and we currently have like 1500 DAU/Month our expenses will rise like 3 times?


Brendan Vanous said on Wed, 08 July 2015 at 2:58 PM

We'll always have the 1000 free DAU for titles in development, but yes, it is going away for live titles. In the specific scenario you described, that means going from $3 a month to $9 a month (basically, all costs aside from the first $6 a month for Premium tier - $2 for Standard - remain the same). But that said, we're still offering developers the opportunity to sign their titles up for the old deal with the 1000 free DAU through the end of this month. If you'd like to take advantage of that, just email us at devrel@playfab.com, and we'll get that set up for you.

And if you're working on staging out a title to build up a user base, and have no way to determine the potential revenue, I'd encourage you to consider starting with our Free tier, so that you can launch with the core features and add things in over time as you build up your user base.

Brendan

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