To deliver more engaging experiences for your players, we also focused time in 2022 on simplifying the process for adding more engagement features to your games.

Allowing players to chat in games is a great way to improve engagement and community building for multiplayer titles.

One major release in the communication space was the addition of optimized voice and text chat functionality through new features for mobile multiplayer titles with Voice and Text Chat (Vivox).

  • The automatic recovery system kicks in when a player temporarily loses internet connectivity moving between connection points – such as when they’re roaming between cellular networks, or when their device switches between an LTE mobile data connection and a home wireless network connection.
  • Smart platform audio management ensures great audio and communications experience, no matter how the player is playing. It configures audio devices on a handset depending on what the player is doing in-game.
  • Our privacy mute feature allows you to cleanly disconnect any capture device when a player mutes themselves, which means that green or orange privacy indicator will go away.

Voice on mobile allows cross-play with PC, Mac, and consoles, and it works well with Unity, Unreal, and any C++ game engine. Read more about these Voice and Text Chat (Vivox) updates in our blog post from July.

Another consideration for multiplayer titles is how your players actually connect for their game sessions. We released two products in 2022 to enable two different connection methods for your multiplayer games: Matchmaker self-serve and Lobby.

Matchmaker is our AAA-proven, smart matchmaking tool with self-serve functionality, added in September 2022. Key features include:

  • The Matchmaker SDK makes it simple to integrate the game client with your game’s matchmaking to connect players with ongoing matches. Access backfill you can rely on.
  • A queue and pools system that allows for multiple variations and modes.
  • Developer-configured match logic, which supports complex game loops. 

To put the matchmaking power in your players’ hands, player-driven matchmaking is available with our Lobby system. Lobby, which went out of beta in June, allows players to create public or private lobbies. It also offers quick-join functionality for players ready to jump into the fun.

To keep players coming back to your game, we’ve also introduced Push Notifications into beta. Push Notifications are used in conjunction with game events and can be used to share exciting updates to players about special or seasonal events, or to re-engage players who haven’t appeared in your game for a certain amount of time.

Source: Unity Technologies Blog