These plans offer additional discounts for high-volume (i.e. 100M+ API / month) brainCloud apps.
The savings come primarily from pre-paying for a bulk quantity of API Counts – but there are also additional savings in the pricing for File Transfers, Deep Data Storage, and Dormant Accounts.
Note – you can see the fine details of these plans on our shiny new getbraincloud.com site! Just go to the Pricing tab, then choose [Bulk+ Plans].
Advice
Note – if you aren’t sure which plan to choose, feel free to reach out to our support team and we’ll review your app usage and advise you!
To switch your app(s) to one of the new plans:
Go to Teams | Manage | Apps
Find the app you want to change, and choose Change Plan from the action menu
Switch to the Bulk Plans tab to view the new plans
Select the plan that works for your app – and click [Choose Plan] to make the change!
Warning
Important – These are pre-paid plans, the base cost of the plan will be charged to your credit card immediately. If you swap plans part-way through the month, the cost is pro-rated according to how many days are left in the current month.
As always, if you have any further questions reach out to our support team and we will help you out!
We wanted to notify you that we have discovered (d’oh!) and fixed (yay!) an error with the RTT Concurrent Connection (i.e. CCx) statistics that brainCloud was collecting for billing purposes.
This error meant that we were undercharging for RTT utilization — and the fix means that the under-charging will stop – and thus, the bills for heavy-usage RTT customers will increase slightly (boo!).
The good news is that we aren’t looking to recoup the years of under-billing. And the better news is that RTT usage pricing is already (and remains) quite inexpensive – so the overall impact to an app’s monthly brainCloud bill is quite small (if anything!):
Apps whose usage is within the Free CCx counts of their plan won’t see a change at all.
For high-usage apps, the average impact is only about 2%.
And of course app’s that aren’t using RTT are not affected at all.
Apologies for the error!
Paul.
—
More information about the defect:
As we were collecting CCx statistics from the multiple RTT Event Servers, we were mistakenly clobbering the server-specific values instead of aggregating them together. This meant that we were actually undercharging by a factor of 3… (i.e. charging only for one server’s worth of connections, while an app’s connections are actually spread across three servers).
As you are hopefully already aware, our long-awaited Dormant User Account pricing goes into effect for the February 2023 billing cycle… (which invoices on March 1st, 2023).
There are a few additional pricing tweaks, including new bulk-pricing plans, that will be become active at that time as well.
Read on for more details!
Dormant User Accounts
brainCloud defines a Dormant User Account as any account where the user hasn’t logged in the app in the past 365 days. These users add no value to your game (e.g. they are probably anonymous and have already uninstalled your app!) – but they do significantly increase costs (including deep data usage) — and slow down your apps. In July 2022, over 50% of brainCloud storage and backup costs were due to dormant accounts!
Beginning with the February 2023 billing cycle, which is invoiced on March 1, 2023, brainCloud apps will be charged $75 / month per Million dormant users (pro-rated). That is not a lot – though for some apps it would be – but ideally we don’t want to collect any Dormant User revenues at all — we are looking for the cost savings! That’s why we have our Auto-deletion service!
For instructions on enabling Auto-Delete to reduce and/or eliminate an Dormant User Account pricing charges, see the bottom section of our previous post.
Hosting Pricing Changes
After some deep-dive usage analysis, we have determined that we need to adjust the costs that we charge for hosting Room and Relay Servers. The current formulas were not accurately reflecting the full costs of providing the service – which need to include:
server hosting costs
disk storage costs
data transfer costs
cloud service support costs ← which is a percentage on top of all costs that our cloud provider (AWS) charges as part of our support plan
Therefore, beginning with the February 2023 billing cycle, which is invoiced on March 1, 2023, the prices for brainCloud Hosting services are changing as follows:
Hosting Server markup – will be increased from 15% mark-up to 25% markup
Hosting Management cost – will increase from 1.5 cents per server hour to 2 cents per server hour
Note – obviously these changes only affect customers using brainCloud’s RelayServer and RoomServer hosting services. Customers not using these services (or using their own GameLift accounts instead) are not impacted.
Deep Data Pricing Reductions
In the good news category, a similar deep-dive analysis has determined that we can safely reduce our deep data pricing!
Therefore, beginning with the February 2023 billing cycle, which is invoiced on March 1, 2023, we are decreasing the Deep Data Storage pricing by 10% – from $0.50 / GB / day -> $0.45 / GB / day!
We are also increasing the included (free!) Deep Data Storage Usage units for Business+ Plan customers from 10GB -> 20GB.
As always, we encourage developers to monitor their deep data usage (especially from Custom Entities), and ensure that unused collections are deleted (i.e. especially in cases where collections were temporary migration collections) – and that apps are making use of our TTL (Time-to-live) feature to automatically clean up temporary entities over time.
New Bulk+ (Pre-purchase) Plans
Finally, brainCloud is introducing four (4) new plans for our highest-volume customers.
These plans allow customers to pre-buy a large quantity of API Requests for a discount – with additional savings on Deep Data Storage, File Transfers, and Dormant User Accounts.
Note that as these are pre-purchase plans; customers are charged the live fee amount at the beginning of the month – and pay for usage for the period at the end of the month as usual. This differs from our regular plans, where all charges are incurred at the end of the month.
API Savings
API savings are stated in comparison to the cost of the equivalent number of API calls using the Business Plus plan.
The new plans are:
Bulk+ 100M ($955 / month)
Includes 100Million API calls at a savings of $75. Additional API calls start at $9.50 / M.
File transfers discounted 3% to $0.145 / GB, and free transfers bumped up to 100 GB.
Deep Data Storage discounted 7% to $0.42 / GB / day, and free storage units bumped up to 50 GB.
Dormant User pricing discounted 5% to $71.00 / Million
Bulk+ 250M ($2,205 / month)
Includes 250Million API calls at a savings of $250. Additional API calls start at $9.25 / M.
File transfers discounted 7% to $0.14 / GB, and free transfers bumped up to 250 GB.
Deep Data Storage discounted 13% to $0.39 / GB / day, and free storage units bumped up to 100 GB.
Dormant User pricing discounted 10% to $67.50 / Million.
Bulk+ 500M ($4,115 / month)
Includes 500Million API calls at a savings of $650. Additional API calls start at $9.00 / M.
File transfers discounted 13% to $0.13 / GB, and free transfers bumped up to 500 GB.
Deep Data Storage discounted 24% to $0.34 / GB / day, and free storage units bumped up to 200 GB.
Dormant User pricing discounted 15% to $64.00 / Million
Bulk+ 1B ($7,705 / month)
Includes 1 Billion API calls at a savings of $1,500. Additional API calls start at $8.50 / M.
File transfers discounted 20% to $0.12 / GB, and free transfers bumped up to 1000 GB.
Deep Data Storage discounted 33% to $0.30 / GB / day, and free storage units bumped up to 400 GB.
Dormant User pricing discounted 20% to $60.00 / Million.
Full specifics for the new plans will be posted to getbraincloud.com in early 2023.
These new plans will become available in time for the March 2023 billing cycle – and depending upon interest – potentially as early as January 2023. Note that when these plans become available, they will include all the pricing changes discussed above (even if they are released before the February billing cycle).
Feel free to reach out to support if you have further questions about these plans.
This is a small, targeted release with a few key improvements. This is also our last planned release before the December holiday season.
Note that this is a server-only release. There are no changes to the client libraries.
Release Highlights
Client API Blocking
We have added a new feature that makes it easier to secure your app from mischievous players.
Devs have always been able to add an API Pre-hook to block specific calls from the client – but this is painful to set up – and results in additional API counts for the app.
Configuring the new API Blocking feature is as simple as going to the new Design | Cloud API | API Blocking page, and selecting the Services + API Calls to block. Hit SAVE and you are done! (Or more likely, you are once you deploy those changes to your production app.)
We hope this new feature helps our customers to keep ahead of their most competitive (and ill-mannered) players.
Note that this feature requires a Plus plan to activate.
Note also that certain calls, like the Award(), Consume() and Reset() currency calls, may already be blocked from the client depending based on the compatibility settings on the Design | Core App Info | Advanced Settings page.
Leaderboard “Days” rotation increase
This is a small change – but apps using the arbitrary “Days” rotation for their leaderboards can now set the rotation as high as 28 days…. ← the previous limit was 14 days.
Portal Changes
We’ve made the following portal changes:
Design
Cloud Code | API Blocking
A new screen that allows devs to block specified APIs from being callable from the client.
Leaderboards |
Leaderboards can now be configured with a 28 day rotation.
API Changes
There are no changes to individual API calls, but the new API Blocking feature means that any client API call can now return the following error:
BCLOUD-3305 and BCLOUD-3331 – Improvements to resetting of end-user passwords. Now preventing double-clicks, and waiting until code has been successfully changed to remove the link code.
BCLOUD-3109 – Improvements to json response exception reporting from scripts
BCLOUD-3295 – Corrected permissions check on app passwords feature
BCLOUD-1518 – Fix to lobby screen – disband on start no longer automatically selected
BCLOUD-3362 – Fix to serialization issue for cloud code version of LobbyService.GetLobbyInstances()
Plus miscellaneous fixes and performance enhancements…
brainCloud 4.13 has just dropped. Here’s what it contains…
Warning
Note – the implementation of GlobalEntity.IncrementGlobalEntityData() and Entity.IncrementUserEntityData() have changed – to properly enforce acl.other permissions. Be sure that your app isn’t improperly using those methods against entities with acl.other set to 0 or 1 – because those calls will now fail under 4.13!
Also creating unowned Group Entities via Group.CreateGroupEntity() or Group.SysCreateGroupEntity() with acl.member of 0 or 1 will no longer be overridden to 2 permission.
Contact support if you would like our team to reset any previously created entities for you.
App Minimum Password Standards
This feature allows developers to set minimum password requirements for the users of their apps.
The following requirements can be set:
minLength – <x> chars. Default 8
maxLength – <y> chars. Default is 25 (max is 128).
minDigits – <n>. Default 1
minUppercase – <n>. Default 1
minLowercase – <n>. Default 1
minSymbols – <n>. Default 1
Feature notes:
This feature affects users when setting new passwords. Existing passwords already associated with an account are not affected by this feature.
For symbol enforcement, the following characters are treated as symbols: ~!@#$%^&*_-+=`|(){}[]:;'<>,.?/
If enabled, these standards are automatically enforced by brainCloud when:
creating new accounts
using Email or Universal authentication
using following User service APIs (if a password is provided – generated passwords will not be verified):
SysCreateUserEmailPassword
SysCreateUserUniversalId
attaching new Email or Universal identities
updating passwords (via reset password and other mechanisms)
Attempting to create an account (or attach an identity) whose password does not meet the requirements will return the new INVALID_PASSWORD_CONTENT ( 550022) reason code.
{
"status_message": "Processing exception (message): Password should have minimum 1 uppercase character/s",
"reason_code": 550022
}
Temporary Leaderboards
Apps can now more easily create temporary leaderboards using the SysCreateLeaderboardConfig() call. A new field, expireInMins, has been added to the configuration object to control the lifetime of the leaderboard. Leaderboards set to expire will show an epoch timestamp the expiry field returned from SysGetLeaderboardConfig() and other methods. The system will automatically remove the leaderboard after the specified time has expired.
Technically the clean-up is done nightly, but those are just implementation details.
This provides a convenient method for creating temporary leaderboards, without having to implement a separate process to clean them up.
Note that this functionality is limited to ADHOC and NEVER rotation leaderboards (i.e. leaderboards that don’t rotate).
Resend Verification Emails
For apps with Reject Unverified Email Logins enabled (via the Design | Authentication | Email screen) — the system will now automatically resend the verification email to users when they re-attempt to login.
GameLift-based Relay Servers
We have extended our AWS GameLift integration to include support for Relay Servers.
For instructions on how to configure them, see this article.
Non-consumable IAP Product History
Non-consumable In-App-Purchases can be processed multiple times (unless the “Do not reprocess currencies for non-consumable IAP products in receipts” compatibility flag is enabled).
This can be triggered when an iOS user clicks [Restore Purchases] on an app. Doing so may cause the transaction to be moved from one brainCloud account to another… (for example – if the iOS user is using a different brainCloud account than when they originally made the purchase).
Note that this sort of activity could also theoretically happen if your app has been cracked and users are sending stolen (but valid) receipts into brainCloud.
We have enhanced the system to keep track of all users that have processed a non-consumable IAP item. The processing history can be viewed by clicking on the new View History menu option on the Monitoring | User Monitoring | Transactions screen.
Library Improvements
All client libraries have been updated to include the 4.13 API additions.
Note that some of the listed improvements were included in 4.12 patches previously.
C++
Upgraded WebSockets for RTT with embedded SSL certification
Reconnect() method returns a failure if previous connection information is not available
Improved build time in Objective-C
Improvements for Android Studio builds
Added response codes and API calls
Java
Added 502 & 504 response code conditions to retry requests.
Reconnect() method returns a failure if previous connection information is not available
Javascript
Reconnect() method returns a failure if previous connection information is not available
Unity
Compressed Responses and Requests are now turned on by default. This should be transparent to your app – but can be disabled by setting EnabledCompressedRequests(false) and EnableCompressedResponses(false).
Reconnect() method returns a failure if previous connection information is not available
Adding Mac OS support for getting country code while initializing the client
Now supports Unity up to 2021.3 LTS
Unreal lib
Plugin supports and ready to use in Unreal Engine 5
Fixes to engine heartbeat not working as intended (also in 4.12.2 patch)
Reconnect() method returns a failure if previous connection information is not available
Moved plugin to standalone release in GitHub for use as git submodule (Improved setup in GitHub?)
Fixed MacOS build error
Added check for failed connection callback
Miscellaneous Improvements
ACL Permissionsfixes
Fixes have been applied to several methods in Global, User and Group Entities.
Be sure to double-check the ACL permissions of you entity objects if you see issues with your app(s)
Custom Entityimprovements
New IncrementSingletonData() API call
Improved locking for Custom Entity Singletons
Deploymentimprovements
Improvements to the web and server components to prevent parallel deployment / import / restore processes
Optimizations to cache notifications to reduce the traffic across the api servers
Added a fail-safe refresh after deployment to ensure that all caches are updated properly
Dormant Userprocessing
Refactored dormant user deletion to add parallel processing (across datastream servers)
Global Files
Fixes to file versioning during deploys and imports (was also patched late in 4.12)
New portal function to manually edit a File’s version on the Design | Custom Config | Global Files page
Groups
The custom data section of Group objects are now indexed on an indexedId field (if it exists). Feel free to set that field, and do searches using it for quick lookups of groups via an alternate id.
Legacy Flagged Users API
We’ve added an API for controlling the users that that appear in the Portal’s flagged users list.
This is legacy system, and not super-scaleable – and thus we have named the methods as such.
Important: Apps are limited to 1000 flagged users max.
The API methods can be found in the GlobalApp service. ← due to the legacy of it’s implementation
Do NOT use these APIs for anything other than tagging users to make them easier to look-up in the portal.
Push Notifications
Improvements to performance of Push Notifications sent to all users of an app
S2S API
Significant improvements to S2S locking – prevents lock timeouts in certain situations
Steamintegration improvements
Steam purchase transaction ids are now prefixed by the appId of the brainCloud app processing them. This reduces situations where the ids may clash if the same Steam information is being used across both dev and production apps in brainCloud.
System now returns more useful information for failed SteamClient validations
Features for Private Licensees
Portal SSO
Improvements to handling of mixed-case email addresses for SSO-connected private deployments
Azure
Improvements to handling of long-lived Azure ServiceBus requests
Portal Changes
We’ve made the following portal changes:
Design Section
Authentication | Passwords
New Passwords screen allows apps to enforce minimum password standards
Cloud Code | API Hooks
Hooks are properly ordered by Service, then Operation in the main screen
Also, when selecting a script for a hook, the scrips are now sorted alphabetically by path
Cloud Code | Scripts
Quick Authenticate now ensures it chooses a platform that is enabled
Optimizations to the script editor – no longer retrieves all scripts when attempting to run the current script!
Custom Config | Global Files
You can now manually adjust the “version” of a file using by choosing Adjust Version from the Action menu.
Integrations | Blockchain
Added new Ultra App blockchain integration to be used by Ultra licensee apps to enable integration with Ultra’s blockchain services – including Uniqs.
Monitoring
Global Monitoring | Custom Entities
Custom Entity collections now displayed in alphabetical order
User Monitoring | Transactions
The processing history of a non-consumable transaction can now be viewed by choosing the View History option from the action menu. Note that the View History menu option will only be available for transactions that have history to view.
API Changes
The following changes/additions have affected the brainCloud API:
Blockchain
New GetUniqs() call added for retrieving Uniqs from the Ultra blockchain
Also new GetBlockchainItems() for other blockchain flavors
Bridge
New VerifySignedJwt() method added to the cloud code bridge to aid in implementing OpenId via External Authentication
Added GetSessionForValidatedCredential() method to the client bridge… (was only in the server bridge before)
Custom Entity Service
New IncrementSingletonData() API call
GlobalApp
New methods for controlling the users that appear in the Portal’s flagged users list. This is legacy system, and not super-scaleable – and thus we have named the methods as such. Do NOT use these APIs for anything other than tagging users to make them easier to look-up in the portal.
Important: Apps are limited to 1000 flagged users max.
The new methods are: SysAddLegacyFlaggedUser(), SysGetLegacyFlaggedUserData(), SysGetLegacyFlaggedUserDataList(), SysRemoveFromLegacyFlaggedUsers(), SysUpdateLegacyFlaggedUser()
Group Service
New cloud code only SysAddGroupMember() call adds the specified member to the group immediately (irregardless of the permissions of the current user)
Leaderboard Service
SysCreateLeaderboardConfig() and SysEditLeaderboardConfig() methods updated to access the new expireInMins field. Select methods like SysGetLeaderboardConfig() now return an expiry field with the calculated epoch expiry.
RTT
New RegisterBlockchainCallback() and DeregisterBlockchainCallback() methods enable registering for real-time blockchain changes
Script Service
Added new cloud code only SysCancelScheduledScriptIfExists() call which as the name implies, cancels a script if it exists – but more importantly, does not return an error if it does not!
Added new cloud code only SysCancelUserScriptBatchIfExists() to do the same for batch script processing
Miscellaneous Changes / Fixes
The following issues have been addressed in this release:
BCLOUD-1257 – Getting NPE When Paginating in the Server logs Page
BCLOUD-1728 – [Internal] The “Localize in” field stuck when user made a changes and click on Cancel button
BCLOUD-2050 – [Internal] Cloud Code – Scripts page, when user “Export All Scripts” and single “Export Script” in the TEAM | Audit Log shows duplicate entries for the exported
BCLOUD-2084 – JoinDivision and SysGetLeaderboardConfig responses to include timestamp division set instance leaderboard was created at
BCLOUD-2113 – Missing translation “Details for” on Monitoring | Global Monitoring | Redemption Codes page
BCLOUD-2114 – Missing translation “Error! Invalid search criteria. Please enter a minimum of 3 characters.” on User Monitoring | User Summary – Select User
BCLOUD-2115 – Missing translation “Code Info” on Monitoring | Global Monitoring | Redemption Codes page
BCLOUD-2191 – Cache ItemDef collection in app cache
BCLOUD-2260 – Support locking of singleton custom entities by ownerId
BCLOUD-2336 – Avoid SendGrid enabled checking (and logging warnings) for User service “create” APIs when notificationTemplateId input is empty string
BCLOUD-2347 – Issue handling Portal User Emails with mixed cases
BCLOUD-2349 – Return a 503 response status in the event of Memcached timeouts
BCLOUD-2351 – Reset password for email and universalId not trimming or lowercasing “externalId” input
BCLOUD-2352 – Custom Entity SysIncrementData and IncrementData APIs require Sharded versions for sharded custom collections
BCLOUD-2353 – [Internal] Nintendo is not in alphabetical order in Select User Identity list
BCLOUD-2375 – [Internal ] Unlock App dialog ignores changes to the application name
BCLOUD-2376 – Errors in prod-baas for IdentityService ATTACH with Google OpenID
BCLOUD-2396 – Super / Manage / Apps – Search filter is performing the query against the server on EVERY character that is typed.
BCLOUD-2433 – Audit logs missing for a number of update and delete Push Notification settings requests from Portal
BCLOUD-2488 – [Internal] Generate error/warning message when user saves a User Statistics Event without proper Actions
BCLOUD-2499 – Modify Steam IAP order id generation to incorporate app id
BCLOUD-2512 – We should have a way of re-sending end-user email verification emails?
BCLOUD-2525 – PATCH! Need IdentityService.getIdentityData() to be accessible from cloud code scripts!
BCLOUD-2528 – [Internal] Design | Cloud Data | Custom Entities, HTTP Status 500 error message pops up when user create “Migrate:true” entity type collection in portal
BCLOUD-2550 – [Internal ] While IOS platform disabled, the script Quick Authenticate throw exception error message “Processing exception (message): Platform IOS has not been enabled for this app”
BCLOUD-2558 – Legacy Portal – Cloud Code Scripts (remove usage of the “scripts-read” call).
BCLOUD-2601 – When Updating Existing Owned Entity(Custom Collection is Sharded) Incorrect Version is Getting Updated in API Response and Global Monitoring – Custom Entities Page
BCLOUD-2647 – API counts posted for scripts using relative reference to other scripts are failing
BCLOUD-2652 – Refactor purgeSoon User Purge processing to use Consumers
BCLOUD-2771 – Email Auth – Resend Verification
BCLOUD-2781 – Cloud code audit log improvements
BCLOUD-2785 – Add support for CustomEntity IncrementSingletonData API and locking on all “increment” APIs
BCLOUD-2786 – Change audit logs to differentiate “App user-enabled” activity for import/deploy versus “Updated app” (generic)
BCLOUD-2788 – Add new Group service SysAddGroupMember API
BCLOUD-2790 – Clicking a folder-based script execution entry from the API Usage page (under API Errors) is not redirecting to the correct location in the portal (API Errors).
BCLOUD-2791 – After a deployment, the system should set a timer for X seconds, and when it expires, trigger a refresh of the app
BCLOUD-2792 – [Internal] Not able to see newly created app in Admin Tools-Deployment drop-down menu of other app
BCLOUD-2815 – Change Deploys, Import Configuration and Restore to Checkpoint processing to clear new appCache via prefix rather than looping
BCLOUD-2821 – New special “indexedId” field in Group Data
BCLOUD-2861 – Cloud Code – API Explorer – Service script list should be sorted by path+scriptname
BCLOUD-2865 – [Internal ] Super | Manage | Teams page, previous Team Name is saving in delete dialog text field while attempting to delete different team
BCLOUD-2866 – [Internal] Design | Cloud Code | Scripts, when user export single script doesn’t logged in the Audit Log
BCLOUD-2873 – [Internal] Monitoring | User Monitoring | Groups, the ID links don’t use a hand cursor when user hover over to click on the ID links
BCLOUD-2877 – Legacy Portal: Item Management – Make select virtual currency mandatory before the user enters the $ amount
BCLOUD-2880 – User batch script with passed in profileIds list to skip null profileId
BCLOUD-2881 – Enable setting of expiry date to applicable Leaderboard APIs to create or edit leaderboard configs
BCLOUD-2885 – Nightly purge of leaderboard scores for old versions is including gameId in query (slow)
BCLOUD-2891 – Legacy Portal – Monitoring / Global Monitoring / Custom Entities – Apply alphabetical order to entity type list.
BCLOUD-2901 – Total Users value displayed for Super | Manage | Apps isn’t accurate
BCLOUD-2902 – [Internal] When user entering iTunes IAP Product ID no limitation and after 53 characters cutting off
BCLOUD-2904 – [Internal] When user entering Configure Platforms fields no limitation and after 56 characters cutting off
BCLOUD-2908 – Deployment / Import Configuration / Restore to Checkpoint safety measures required to prevent overlap
BCLOUD-2909 – Core App Info – Admin Tools – Deploy configuration button should be disabled when deployment is in progress
BCLOUD-2918 – Legacy Portal – API Key Name is Restricted to Numbers, letters and underscore (_) When Adding a New Key in Edit Profile | Permissions | API Keys Tab
BCLOUD-2921 – Internal – Unlock dialog will display APP ID twice after user selects Cancel on the unlock dialog
BCLOUD-2923 – [Internal ] Deploying to an app with incorrect app name does not show error, instead upon hovering over Deploy button ( active) shows red icon
BCLOUD-2948 – Unreal Engine Heartbeat Not Working As Intended
BCLOUD-2956 – [Internal] French Version – Selecting Group id and Group Name from drop-down menu cut off
BCLOUD-2996 – Legacy Portal – Scripts – API Usage should use new fields returned from the server instead of calculating the values itself.
BCLOUD-2998 – Legacy Portal – If passwords feature not enabled those password rules should not be displayed on the Reset Password page
BCLOUD-3000 – Legacy Portal – User Monitoring | Transactions, adjust the View Transaction to show both dataJson and history
BCLOUD-3002 – Set proper version on target files for deploy
BCLOUD-3029 – JSON Error App not found error generates when deploying to the same app multiple times
BCLOUD-3037 – New app-overridable brainCloud property to control audit logging of leaderboard configuration (create, edit) via Sys or post to dynamic APIs
BCLOUD-3040 – [Legacy] Desing | Gamification – Statistics Event ‘Add User Statistics Event’ pops up dialog has ‘Currencies’, ‘User Statistics’ and ‘Global Statistics’ options are enabled compared to XP Levels page
BCLOUD-3044 – Add some additional logging around 3rd party authentication
BCLOUD-3045 – Legacy Portal – Player Selector – Applicable options in search drop-down not working correctly when language is French.
BCLOUD-3051 – Do some pre-processing on Nintendo externalId
BCLOUD-3054 – [Legacy] Icon of Platforms ‘Oculus’ and ‘Apple watchOS’ are not shown in User Monitoring >User Summary Logged In From section
BCLOUD-3067 – GlobalEntity IncrementGlobalEntityData is not enforcing read-only for other users
BCLOUD-3081 – Entity service Increment User Entity Data APIs are not enforcing read-only for other users
brainCloud 4.12 is a targeted release to get Nintendo Switch Authentication support in place before our summer holidays!
Release Highlights
Nintendo Switch Authentication
brainCloud now supports native Nintendo Switch authentication.
There are now Nintendo variants of all the standard Authentication and Identity calls – see the API Changes section for more details.
Note that so far these calls have been added to the Unity Client library only. The Unreal Client libs will be added soon!
Miscellaneous changes
Bridge-based DEBUG log messages are now free when not debugging! Calling the bridge.logDebug() and bridge.logDebugJson() calls have been heavily optimized to do nothing (when not called from the API Explorer or Script Editor) – so we no longer record API counts for these calls. Note that we do still count API counts for debug log calls made from the Logging service itself ← since those calls still go through our full Dispatcher and DispatchHandler systems. So don’t do that – use the bridge methods instead!
GetUserItemsPage() performance has been improved The GetUserItemsPage() / GetUserItemsPageOffset() calls have been refactored to only refresh the items that are being returned by that page call… (instead of unnecessarily refreshing all items during the initial call).
Improved RTT WebSocket Disconnect Handling in Unreal In addition to triggering on websocket disconnects, our Unreal libraries now also use a heartbeat timeout to detect disconnects (useful in platforms like IOS where the disconnect notification can take a while to arrive).
Improved Country Code, Language Code, and TimeZoneOffset handling Both the Unity and Unreal client libraries have been enhanced to detect country code, language code, and timezone offset on more platforms (and we’ll be making more improvements in the future).
Portal Changes
We have made the following portal changes:
Design Section
Core App Info | Platforms
Added Nintendo to the platforms list
Monitoring
Global Monitoring | Custom Entities
Added sortable Updated At column to custom entity list screens
User Monitoring | Select User
Added ability to search by Nintendo (Network Services Account) ID
User Monitoring | User Summary
A user’s Nintendo ID will now be shown in the Credentials section of this screen
User Monitoring | Custom Entities
Added sortable Updated At column to custom entity list screens
Reporting
Analytics
Enhanced to show Nintendo platform players
API Changes
The following changes/additions have affected the brainCloud API:
BrainCloudWrapper
Added AuthenticateNintendo() and SmartSwitchAuthenticateNintendo() calls
Authentication Service
Added AuthenticateNintendo() call
Identity Service
Added AttachNintendoIdentity(), DetachNintendoIdentity() and MergeNintendoIdentity() calls
Miscellaneous Changes / Fixes
Updated libraries
4.12 version of all client libs are available.
The Unity and Unreal libs in particular have significant features and improvements in this release – go grab ’em!
Documentation updates
The latest APIs have been added to the API Reference.
As you are probably aware – brainCloud’s pricing model is designed to be elastic – in that the cost to you (our customer) is proportional to the costs we incur in running your app(s) on our service.
This model is maintained via the formulas that we use to calculate API counts, deep data usage, hosting costs, etc. Keeping the model accurate requires periodic assessments to ensure that the components are balanced — and a review was long overdue!
Reviewing the data, here is what we found:
Dormant account costs! The storage of dormant accounts (i.e. players who haven’t logged into an app for years) is an ever-increasing concern – affecting storage + backup costs, system performance, and deep data costs for all apps. Think about it: As an app enters the long-tail of it’s product lifecycle, the cost of hosting that app should go down – not up!
RTT bulk message sends. When we first developed RTT, we expected much higher usage on a per-connection basis – and thus designed the usage formulas accordingly. It turns out that devs are finding that it’s very convenient to have an RTT connection available even in low-usage situations – which is great! – but ensuring proper cost coverage does necessitate an adjustment to the formula.
Cloud code API imbalance. Calling brainCloud APIs from within cloud code scripts is more efficient than calling them directly from the client – and our API count formulas reflect that. Unfortunately, the existing formula has a design flaw that unintentionally encourages developers to artificially break their code into smaller and smaller scripts. This is both bad design and less efficient for brainCloud – so we are correcting this.
Debug logging! Some apps have a surprising amount of debug logging in their scripts — which actually results in more system traffic than you’d think — which is why we charge for the calls — which results in higher costs for our customers. In brainCloud 4.12 we’ve optimized the handling of bridge-based DEBUG log message so that we no longer have to charge for them when you aren’t debugging (via the API Explorer / Script Editor).
The details of these changes (and when they take affect) are described below. How these changes affect your app depend upon the details of how your app is using brainCloud.
Impact to apps
Established apps with lots of custom entities will likely see their monthly bills significantly reduced as the Auto-Delete feature removes the abandoned accounts – greatly reducing their deep data usage. That’s provided that the devs enable Auto-delete of course.
Apps that choose to retain all (or a selected portion) of their dormant users will see a proportionate increase in monthly costs as we start to charge for Dormant Users.
Apps that don’t use a lot of scripts (and there are tons of them) won’t see much of a difference at all. Apps with scripts that make lots of API calls will see a modest increase due to the rebalancing – which may be somewhat offset by the DEBUG log savings.
We hope that folks understand that we make these changes with the best intentions of ensuring a better alignment between the costs that we incur and the costs to you – to ensure a healthy service for everyone!
Pricing changes
As of brainCloud 4.12 (targeted for release on July 20, 2022), we are introducing the following change:
We are eliminating the charge for bridge-based DEBUG log messages – when not actually debugging in the API Explorer or Script Editor. We have optimized the pipeline for DEBUG log messages called directly from the bridge service – so that these are now essentially no-ops, and thus we no longer need to charge for them. This is a significant cost reduction for some devs who like to leave the debug calls in place (and who wouldn’t?) – and a greater convenience for all devs – who no longer need to comment these calls out to reduce costs.
As of September 1, 2022, we are introducing the following changes:
We are re-balancing the # of free API calls that you get with every Cloud Code script call – from 3 -> 2 calls. Note that every call after the two free calls continues to cost 1/2 an API count. This corrects an imbalance from our original formula, that had the unintended side-effect of making some devs think that we were encouraging them to artificially break up their code into multiple smaller scripts. (Hint: We would never intentionally encourage devs to break up their code for reasons that don’t make sense from a design or runtime perspective!)
We are adjusting the ratio used to convert from bulk RTT message sends to API Counts from 1000:1 -> 100:1. This looks like a big change, but the message send traffic will still only adds up to a few dollars per month for even the most active apps on the platform. Still – it ensures we are covered should anybody choose to build the next Twitter on brainCloud!
Finally, as of January 1, 2023, we will be introducing billing for Dormant User Accounts.
Information
Long-time brainCloud users will note that we had first announced Dormant User Pricing back in July 2020 – to be effective as of Jan 2021! What can we say? We have been busy! It definitely *is* going live this January – so start deleting those users now!
brainCloud defines a Dormant User Account as any account where the user hasn’t logged in the app in the past 365 days. These users add no value to your game (e.g. they’re probably anonymous and have already uninstalled your app!) – but they do significantly increase costs (including deep data usage) — and slow down your apps. Currently over 50% of brainCloud storage and backup costs is due to dormant accounts.
Starting January 1, 2023, brainCloud apps will be charged $75 / month per Million dormant users (pro-rated). That is not a lot – though for some apps it would be – but ideally we don’t want to collect any Dormant User revenues at all — we’re looking for the cost savings! That’s why we have our Auto-deletion service!
Auto-Deletion
The Auto-Deletion service (configured via the Design | Core App Info | Auto-Delete Users screen) is designed to keep dormant users from piling up.
We know deleting user accounts is scary – so we have made it very flexible – allowing you customize:
which accounts get deleted <- you can define exclusions for users who have made purchases, attached an e-mail address, have virtual currencies greater than a certain balancer, etc.
if (and when) users are notified – notify users in advance by email <- requires an attached Sendgrid account
whether the accounts are archived for a period of time – you can optionally archive an export of a users data to a Custom Entity collection before deleting the account (just-in-case) <- requires a Plus plan
Note that depending upon the options you choose, there are some billing charges that apply as Auto-delete removes accounts:
+1 Bulk API Count for each user deleted
+1 Email Sent API Count for each email notification sent
Plus deep data charges for temporarily archiving player data…
Advice – Enable Auto-Delete today!
Deleting dormant user accounts is a background process – and is far from instantaneous. We encourage apps with larger populations of dormant users to enable Auto-Deletion today – so that their older accounts will be purged before January 2023 rolls around!
In summary
As always, our goal when designing our pricing models is to ensure that the pricing you are charged reflects the costs that we incur in providing the service.
We feel this approach aligns our interests. The more server resources your apps consume, the higher our costs, and the higher the price to you. But the more efficiently you can build your app, the lower our costs, and the lower the pricing for you. It’s win:win – and we are on the same side!
If you have any questions or feedback, please reach out to us via the Green Chat widget. We are always happy to hear from you!
brainCloud 4.11 has dropped. Here is what it contains.
Release Highlights
Redemption Code Enhancements
brainCloud 4.11 adds significant customization abilities to the Redemption Code service.
Developers can now write and configure scripts to programmatically handle the processing of redemption codes. These scripts can even incorporate asynchronous processing so that redemption processing can work with off-board fulfillment systems (i.e. delivery of virtual or physical goods via a 3rd party system).
brainCloud 4.11 also adds the ability to generate groups of redemption codes – in two code formats*:
StructuredGuid – which is a standard GUID-format (i.e. “be0cc83f-024b-4dce-b50c-035ca51e99ae”)
FiveByFive – which is a 5×5 alphanumeric code (i.e. “a1c2b-a82k3-d82h3-48sw7-8a82d”)
Note – Additional code types may be added in the future.
Simply choose the format of codes that you want – and the quantity – and an email will be sent to you with the generated set of codes.
With this – the following API calls have been added:
GenerateCodes() – generates a set of codes, and emails them to the specified user
GenerateCodesInline() – generates a set of codes, and returns them directly in the API call… (limited to max of 100 codes generated at a time)
ProcessAsynchronousResponse() – used in asynchronous custom processing scripts to tell the Redemption Code service the updated status of the specified code.
Division Management API
brainCloud adds a new API for the creation and management of Divisions – accessible via S2S and cloud code.
The following new methods are available:
SysCreateDivisionSetConfig()
SysDeleteDivisionSetConfig()
SysEditDivisionSetConfig()
SysListDivisionSetConfigs()
SysReadDivisionSetConfig()
Note that the JoinDivision() and SysGetLeaderboardConfig() calls have also been enhanced to return a new createdAt field (for division leaderboard instances only) that indicates the date+time that that particular division set instance was created.
Relay Server Fixes / Improvements
We have improved the robustness of the relay server and added support for customizable timeouts.
The following timeout values are now supported:
MEMBER_TIMEOUT – Number of seconds within which a member needs to initially join the game. They will be automatically dropped if they don’t join within this time. Default is 30 seconds.
CONNECTION_TIMEOUT – Number of seconds a connection can be idle (i.e. no activity from the client) before the server drops it. Default is 10 seconds.
RESEND_TIMEOUT – Number of seconds of resending the same packet before the player is dropped for “too many packet drops”. Default is 10 seconds.
Note – these improvements are only available for the v2 Relay Protocol servers.
Unity Client Improvements
We have made significant improvements to how the Unity Client processes timeouts and connection errors – especially in times of high server load. These improvements will be applied to the other client libraries in the coming months.
In addition, our latest libs address a WebSocket change in the 2021+ versions of Unity.
As always, for best performance, we encourage all developers to upgrade to the latest client libraries. So be sure to grab the 4.11 libs!
Unity Plug-in Changes
The Unity Plug-in has been enhanced to accept Builder API keys in the password field during login. This is to assist our private licensees who are transitioning to Single-Sign-On usage.
New Unity Authentication Example
We have totally re-written the Unity Authentication example – from OnGUI to Unity UI – to better illustrate how authentication works – including our recently added AuthenticateAdvanced() call.
We even have new docs and a video to go with it. Check it out!
Additional Features
Added new Ultra Blockchain Service for our Ultra.io partner
Auto-Delete Users – we are finally introducing the Auto Deletion service that we teased way back in brainCloud 4.5.5! (Hey – we’ve been busy! 🙂 ) Anyway, this service allows your app to automatically delete users who haven’t logged in for a given period of time (e.g. 1 year) – with useful exceptions, like folks who have monetized, reached a certain level, etc. You can even choose to save a backup of a deleted user for X days. Deleting dormant users saves data and speeds up your app – and saves you $$$ as well!
Backup Deleted Users for X days. If you enable the Auto-Delete feature (above), you also get the benefit of backing up deleted users for X days when they are deleted via the playerState.Delete() method as well.
Improved caching of AppStore product items
Updated Facebook Graph API to version 10 (technically introduced earlier in a 4.10 patch)
Added missing DELETE (with query parm) APIs to HTTPClient…
Added the missing SmartSwitch calls to the Java library.
Added the missing SaveDataHelper calls to the Android C++ library.
The format of individual User Exports have been updated:
new appId, profileId and time fields added to the top-level of the export for easy searching
gameId / appId and playerId / ownerId fields removed from sub-data components (redundant)
now excluding the following data: playerActivty, groups (we still export the list of groups the player was a member of, just not the data of the groups themselves), sentEvent, matchedOwned, matchHistory, playbackStreams and playbackStreamsTargetUser
Features for Private Licensees
The following features are of particular interest to customers who are licensing private instances of brainCloud:
SSO status of Team Members now shown in the Super | Manage | Users and Team | Manage | Members pages.
To better support private licensees moving to SSO, both the Unity Plug-in and our TeamAdmin APIs now support Builder API Keys as passwords. This behaviour is controlled by the new portalSSOTeamAdminAPI brainCloud property.
Portal Changes
We have made a few tweaks for 4.11… (though admittedly most of our web efforts are directed at Portal-X, the next-generation portal for brainCloud 5…)
Design
Cloud Data | Custom Entities
Custom index Keys JSON is now properly pretty-printed
Integrations | Blockchain
Added support for the Ultra Blockchain Service (for customers on our Ultra.io licensee’s platform)
Marketplace | Redemption Codes
Redemption Code type screen updated to support linking in a custom Redemption Script for automating the redemption process.
Added a Generate Codes function to allow for easy generation of codes in several formats.
Monitoring
Global Monitoring | Recent Errors
Added a Host Name field to error logs – convenient for tracking down certain errors
Global Monitoring | Redemption Codes
Updated the Redemption Code monitoring screen to support the new asynchronous processing states.
User Monitoring | User Summary
Updated the Select User search screen to support Ultra ID lookup
Reporting
Reporting | API Errors
Fixed the error percentage calculations
Reporting | API Usage
Hosting Hours now only shows two digits after the decimal place
Team
Manage | Members
A Team Members SSO status will be shown in private licensee deployments that support SSO.
Super (private licensees only)
Manage | Users
A Team Member’s SSO status will be shown in private licensee deployments that support SSO.
API Changes
The following changes/additions have affected the brainCloud API:
AppStore
VerifyPurchase() – we are now bubbling up more errors from the transactionResultCode up to the overall resultCode. (Basically, everything except for RESULT_FAILED_ALREADY_PROCESSED should bubble up). You still want to check the individual transaction details for receipts with multiple transactions, including ensuring that processedCount > 0.
BlockChain
Added methods to support minting NFTs (from Redemption Codes) on a Blockchain service. These methods are MintNFTFromRedemptionCode() , which of course starts the minting process, and GetTransaction() – which checks the status of a minting operation.
CustomEntity
Reminder that we added UpdateEntityFieldsSharded() and SysUpdateEntityFieldsSharded() as a patch in 4.10. It is important to use these variants of the UpdateEntityFields() call if you plan to shard your Custom Entity collections <- which is recommended for large collections for best performance. (Ask a support tech to shard the collections for you!)
Also a reminder that GetEntityPage() and GetEntityPageOffset() have been enhanced to allow devs to specify whether they want the queries to accommodate entities not owned by the current player. There is a related compatibility flag that all apps should have set to disabled – unless you have a specific reason to enable it. More info here: https://getbraincloud.com/apidocs/custom-entity-getentitypage-improvement/
HTTPClient
Added query string support to all relevant HTTP methods that were missing it – including PostMultipartResponseJson(), PostJsonOffboard(), PatchJsonResponseJson(), PatchTextResponseText(), Delete() and DeleteJsonResponseJson()
Leaderboard
SysGetLeaderboardConfig() response now includes, for division set leaderboards only, a new createdAt field, which is the date+time in millis when the instance leaderboard was created.
PlayerState
DeleteUser() call will save a backup copy of the deleted user – if player backups are configured on the Design | Core App Info | Auto-Delete Users screen
RedemptionCode
Added the following new methods: GenerateCodes(), GenerateCodeInline() and ProcessAsynchronousResponse()
Tournaments
Added new Division Management API calls – SysCreateDivisionSetConfig(), SysDeleteDivisionSetConfig(), SysEditDivisionSetConfig(), SysListDivisionSetConfigs(), SysReadDivisionSetConfigs()
JoinDivision() response now includes a createdAt field, which is the date+time in millis when the division set instance leaderboard was created
User
The optionsJson parameter for SysGetUserExport() API now supports the ability to exclude specific custom entity collections
Miscellaneous Changes / Fixes
Updated libraries
All libraries have been updated with the latest API enhancements. Go get ’em!
Documentation updates
All new APIs have been added to the API Reference.
There’s a new document and video for the Unity Authentication Example.
Important Fixes
BCLOUD-2091 – Unity Error re: Runtime of websocket-native.jslib not being defined
BCLOUD-1461 – Swart Switch calls are missing for Java
BCLOUD-1718 – Reset Univeral ID API sholdn’t throw a no session error
BCLOUD-1562 – Treat a blank queue guard setting as “any” rather than “stop”
BCLOUD-1631 – Return TLS_VERSION_INVALID for RTT connection attempts that don’t meet TLS version requirements
BCLOUD-1876 – Long-lived lobby instances are getting “stuck”
BCLOUD-2077 – Gamification – XP Levels: Min Points validation is broken/unenforced when editing and existing XP level
BCLOUD-1806 – Swapping between child/parent profiles in the Unlock dialog displays incorrect app name
Plus miscellaneous fixes and performance enhancements…
Our DevOps team had to update brainCloud set of NAT gateways for brainCloud’s Public BaaS (i.e. portal.braincloudservers.com). This only affects developers who have whitelisted these IPs for security purposes.
Last week we became aware of a potential issue when using GetEntityPage() with owned entities.
The issue is related to how brainCloud handles ACL permissions. As you may or may not know, all entities in brainCloud support ACL permissions – and you can set the global accessibility of an object by setting the acl.other permission to one of the following:
0 = no access
1 = read-only access
2 = read + write access
In loose terms, any object with acl.other != 0 is shared with (or accessible by) all users of the app.
This has large implications when dealing with Owned Custom Entities and the GetEntityPage() call – because by the previous default – the call would look for all entities that meet the search criteria that:
Are owned by the current user
Are accessible by the current user
Owned is simple – we simply add “ownerId”: <profileId> to the query provided by the developer.
Accessible is not so simple – the database must look at all of the objects that the player doesn’t own, and specifically examine each objects ACL to see if acl.other != 0 !!! This is incredibly slow, and exponentially so!Especially since 99.9% of the time, a developer is only looking for the entities owned by the current user!
Information
Note – this issue does not affect Unowned Custom Entities, Sys calls (which ignore permissions), or the Singleton API (which assumes objects must be owned by the current user). It only affects GetEntityPage() and GetEntityPageOffset().
The Solution
To address this issue, we are changing to the default behaviour of `GetEntityPage() so that it no longer considers shared entities (by default) for Owned Custom Entities.
Thus, a query with the following criteria will now only return objects that are owned by the current user:
Going forward, if an app wants to modify this default behaviour to include accessible (i.e. shared) objects that are owned by other users – they can add the new ownedOnly: false option. For example:
Note also that your CustomEntity should include Custom Indexes that include the acl.other field for efficient queries where ownedOnly: false.
Compatibility Flag
Because this is a change to the previous brainCloud behaviour, we have introduced a new compatibility flag. When enabled, the following flag preserves the old functionality – where both objects owned and accessible by the user will be returned.
The new compatibility flag can be found in the Design | Core App Info | Advanced Settings page:
[ x ] Include shared objects in Owned Custom Entity GetEntityPage queries (warning: can be slow). Can be overwritten by specifying ‘ownedOnly’ in query context ‘options’.
When enabled, the default for ownedOnly is false – and when disabled, the default for ownedOnly is true.
Advice
Note that this compatibility flag, like all compatibility flags, is automatically enabled for existing apps (for backwards compatibility), and disabled for new apps.
We believe strongly that this new-and-improved GetEntityPage behaviour is the better + safer default – and thus highly recommend that all developers whose owned queries are only expecting objects owned by the current user go to this compatibility flag and immediately “uncheck” it to enable the new behaviour!
Remember – this option does not affect queries for Un-owned Custom Entities. It also does not affect Sys calls. So both of those scenarios will continue to return objects not owned by the current user – regardless of the compatibility setting.
If you have any questions – please reach out to the support team.