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Build in-game communities with Friends

Add a new social experience to your games by helping players connect with others across any platform.
Friends

Foster a strong in-game community with Friends

Community features can have a direct impact on your game’s success and longevity. By adding Friends to your game, your players can build online gaming friendships to help increase engagement and reduce player churn.

Friends

Power cross-platform friendships

Your players can build friend lists on any platform – across mobile, console, or PC gaming. Platform identity is converted into PlayerID by Unity Authentication, so relationships exist in a single game and function across any platform it’s published on.

Friends

Complete the social experience with other tools from UGS

Connecting friends is only one piece of the social puzzle. By integrating Friends with Lobby and Voice and Text Chat (Vivox), you can offer your players a complete social experience and keep them in your game longer.

Technical features of Friends

Friends lists

These lists are persistent in the scope of a game, so players maintain them across game sessions.

Presence

Presence allows players to see their friends’ status – if they’re online, offline, and where they are in the game if they’re currently playing.

Block list

Put the power in your players’ hands by allowing them to disable their Presence status for any friends they choose to block on their list.

Interoperability

Together with Lobby and Leaderboards, Friends makes it easy for your players to connect and compete with others.

Friends sample

Download the Friends sample project to see how a typical implementation of the Friends service works in a game.

Friends pairs well with these services

Lobby
Players can connect in public or private rooms for a game session.
Voice Chat (Vivox)
Give your players a voice with positional or walkie-talkie-style voice chat.
Leaderboards
Boost competition and engagement by letting players compare performance.

Resources

UGS Community
Introducing Community Solutions to manage toxicity in gaming
Blog

Learn more about Unity Community Solutions – a suite of products designed to strengthen player connections, enhance safety, and enrich the social gaming experience.

Friends list
Bringing the social experience to your games
Blog

Introducing Friends and Leaderboards to help developers of all sizes add a new layer of social experience for players to their games.

“The Unity Friends SDK was extremely beneficial to Breachers. It enabled us to easily create a cross-platform friend list. Supported by excellent documentation and samples the implementation was a breeze. Thanks to it our users will be able to form friendships and easily join each other in-game.”
TIJS VAN DE VELDE / TRIANGLE FACTORYSenior Developer
Friends
Let players build communities with Friends

Help players create online gaming friendships and communities that last to increase engagement and reduce player churn in your games.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to integrate Friends?

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What gaming platforms does Friends work with?

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How do I get started with Friends?

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How much does Friends cost?

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