Update Catalog Items Request. This operation is not additive. Using it will cause the indicated catalog version to be created from scratch. If there is an existing catalog with the version number in question, it will be deleted and replaced with only the items specified in this call. Update Catalog Items Result. Update to Currency for Non-Founders. By The Fortnite Team. Hey Fortnite community, We’re introducing a new currency type in v9.40 for non founding Save the World players that we’re calling X-Ray Tickets. X-Ray tickets will replace V-Bucks for all non founding players and can be earned by taking part in quests, missions alerts. V-Bucks aren’t e-money or any other currency and can only be used according to Fortnite’s rules. Gift cards will not be replaced if lost, stolen, destroyed, or used without permission. Use of a gift card constitutes acceptance of the applicable terms and user agreement. A: WoW Tokens are available for purchase for real money through the World of Warcraft in-game Shop. You can access the Shop through the main menu (Esc) or the row of feature buttons next to your character’s bags. You can then sell your WoW Token through a dedicated exchange in the Auction House, located in the WoW Token section.

Playfab Update User Currency After Real Money Purchase Plans
Playfab Update User Currency After Real Money Purchase Plan
Playfab Update User Currency After Real Money Purchase Account
Playfab Update User Currency After Real Money Purchases

My experience is largely in features and infrastructure for growing and retaining users, aka “growth”. Recently, I learned the games industry has a comparable concept “LiveOps”. I’ve found value in using the latter to learn more about the space in general.

PlayFab has an excellent guide to LiveOps. The guide is a brief and accessible reference, so I’ll just jot notes below.

The guide summarizes LiveOps as “Games are shifting from one-off experiences to services that evolve. Developers of successful live games focus on understanding their players, meeting their individual needs, and cultivating long-term relationships”

In growth-speak, I’d phrase this as analytics, personalization and retention. There is some direct association with growth: “We’re investing in games that people play for longer and engage with much more deeply … to drive growth …“

I guess the “live” in LiveOps refers to “services that evolve”: “… live services

represented nearly 58% of Electronic Arts’ net revenue …” I can see how this would be a big shift from encoding all logic in a released binary. “save client updates for entirely new features or large assets”

Playfab Update User Currency After Real Money Purchase Plans

“With a LiveOps game, the real work starts with launch instead of ending there” I think there’s less of a distinction in a non-game app; most apps already pull content from a network.

A summary of LiveOps features:

“server-side configurations …”
“… content data untethered from client versions …”
“… in-depth analytics”

“Content data” refers to “… new experiences and content, thereby extending the lifetime of our games“, which explains the claim that LiveOps can reduce up-front investment.

“… the ‘live’ part of LiveOps goes through three post-launch stages:

Iterating your Game …
Personalizing the Player Experience …
Managing the Community …”

I think all of these apply to apps in general.

I like how the breakdown also indicates infra and talent required in each step:

Iteration requires “build, test-and-deploy pipeline, basic analytics, and content configurations“
Personalization requires “data analysts and product managers to use more sophisticated tools such as recommendation systems and live events managers“
Community management requires “customer support staff, marketing, and community managers … guild systems, user-generated content, and multiplayer services for matchmaking, cross-network play, and communications.”

The guide presents these as sequential steps of maturity. In my experience with growth, 1 and 3 came before 2, since generating per-user state was relatively resource intensive. Also, we could start with relatively naive approaches to 2 and 3, eg friend recommendations by a static topic like “sports”, and then layer on more sophisticated alternatives, eg per-user behavioral predictions.

LiveOps has a user-centric perspective: “LiveOps developers know that players and communities evolve. When creating a game, we’re not movie directors with a singular vision, but more like TV network program managers … LiveOps games are player-centric and react to player desires and needs …”

I’m a fan of a customer-centric perspective. Differentiating user-centric seems like it should be obvious, but it’s nice to see it emphasized.

My recent experience is in growth as a service, which is why I differentiate “users” from “customers” (Customers would be apps that have users/players.)

Acquisition

“With LiveOps, acquisition is an ongoing process” I guess this recognizes that people may come and go from a game, although in the terminology I’m familiar with, returning would be “resurrection” or “reactivation”. (“Reactivation” is listed later as an example of acquisition.)

I appreciate the list of common acquisition sources:

Store discovery
Public relations
Advertising
Cross-promotion
Influencer marketing
Social installs, eg shares
Reactivation

Helpful tip: “Track player engagement and retention based on source of acquisition and look for trends” Platforms providing acquisition channels should also provide attribution, eg Google Play Store’s campaign attribution passed to Android’s Install Referrer API.

Kind of obvious, but the guide recommends A/B testing reactivation inducements. Later the guide simply recommends testing everything all the time.

Retention

Retention is “one of the only data-supported ways to know if players enjoy playing“ Flash games that pay alot of real money.

Common techniques for increasing retention:

Adding content
Stickiness due to investment – this comes up later in the “conversion” section
Social connections
Compelling game mechanics, eg Go has “simple rules that allow for endless new strategies”

Helpful tip: “Try to communicate only what’s interesting and valuable, and mix up rewards so they don’t become background noise” I’ve heard this phrased as “fatigue” Messaging platforms should provide features to help customers avoid fatiguing users.

Engagement

The definition of “engagement” or “active” usage is often mysterious to me, so I appreciate the general description: “Active communities engage with a game by playing, providing feedback, and promoting (discussing online or in person, creating fan content, and so on) … Common reporting period intervals include 1-day, 7-day, and 30-day.” An arbitrary post from SurveyMonkey has some context for MAU.

Interesting: “engagement is the only KPI that some studios measure.“

Another relatively obvious tip: “Look at how studios with games like yours engage their community as a baseline for your own engagement efforts”, ie “competitive analysis”. But still, as a general primer, I appreciate the comprehensiveness.

Support

“Your team needs the tools to isolate and identify problems, fix or escalate them … and communicate with players throughout the process.” 👍

Common tools:

External-facing ticketing, so internal and external actors can coordinate
“ ability to look up individual player profiles and make manual changes”. Ideally, a customer can do this themselves.
“A way to suspend or ban players”
“A way for players to upload crash logs” Seems this could be automatic, eg Crashlytics
“Ways to send messages to players” (and customers)

Good tip: “Changes in support contact and resolution rates (e.g. number of support tickets opened and closed) can indicate larger issues.”

Playfab Update User Currency After Real Money Purchase Plans

Acquisition

Retention

Engagement

Support

Analytics

Playfab Update User Currency After