We’re pleased to announce the full public availability of brainCloud 2.1.0!

New features in this release include:

API Features

• Client library version and game version verification is now working properly
• Platform constants changed for Windows Phone and Mac – removed versioning
• C++ library now easier to integrate into your project (fixed 64 bit iOS targets and upgraded jsoncpp to 1.0.0)
• C++ and C# client libraries improved to use additional enums/structures for certain method calls
• Cocos 2d-x example posted to tutorials section
• Misc fixes and improvements

Portal/Server Features

• Player monitoring – can now reset player’s segments, promotions, and associated criteria data to facilitate easier testing
• Request / Response log now includes inner status codes
• Cloud code logger object added to allow easier debugging of scripts
• Authentication exceptions now log the profile id
• Anonymous identity segment criteria now apply to users who *only* have an anonymous identity
• Automated promotions improved
• Javascript/image/page caching issues fixed
• Misc fixes and improvements

Plus we’ve refreshed the look of our Apidocs portal, and continue to add new content.

Check it out at https://docs.braincloudservers.com/learn/introduction/

As you know, we are continually measuring, tweaking and improving the performance of brainCloud.

The good news is that the latest round of platform optimizations had a greater impact than expected – meaning we can handle even more users on our servers at lower cost.

The even better news is this means, effective immediately, we’re adjusting our pricing tiers downward.

This is part of our ongoing pledge to align brainCloud pricing with our costs, to ensure we’re offering you the most cost-effective solution possible.

While delivering the good news, we thought we’d spend a moment to provide a bit more background on brainCloud’s pricing model. 

API Usage – the brainCloud Pricing Model

brainCloud pricing is based on API Usage – which is the number of API calls (requests + responses) that your app makes to our servers.

We choose API Usage because:

• Cost alignment – it aligns directly with our server costs
• Cost transparancy – the costs are calculated without hidden assuptions (e.g. average user engagement, etc.)
• Scalable by benefits – it allows customers to decide how much or how little of brainCloud to use, and pay accordingly

Of course, it does have the disadvantage that unlike DAU (Daily Active Users) or MAU (Monthy Active Users), API Usage is not a term that most developers and business people are used to talking in terms of.

Estimating API usage

Reporting API usage after-the-fact is straight forward; Estimating API usage ahead-of-time is tricky.

brainCloud API usage is dependent upon:

• the type of app or game
• how much of the brainCloud feature set you’re using
• the engagement of your game (length of play, # of sessions, etc.)

For shorthand, we can use the following formula:

Estimated # API calls = <API calls per DAU> x <avg DAU per day> x 30 days

So – for example, if we were estimating the montly cost of a game with:

• 100 API calls / DAU (which is about our system average)
• 5000 daily active users (average)

it would total 15M API calls per month, which would cost $150 USD.

Average API usage

The API Usage per DAU in brainCloud varies by app – but averages ~100 API Calls per DAU.

Some competitors quote an average of 200 or 300 API calls per DAU – there are 3 main reasons for this discrepancy:

1. Designed for mobile (less chatty) – Our API is optimized for mobile, and from the beginning has been designed to do more with fewer interactions.
2. They are conservatively estimating cost – for them to match up costs to revenues in their forecasts, they need to conservatively estimate how much server usage a player could cost.  It’s human nature to therefore estimate high to ensure that costs are covered.  We have no need to do this since we charge for API usage itself
3. We support lower usage scenarios – Clients are free to use as much or as little of brainCloud. Want to use brainCloud for cloud saves only?  No problem.  brainCloud monetization features only? Go nuts – and pay less because you’re utilizing our servers less!

In practice, we’ve had apps in our network use less than 10 transactions per DAU, and some use upwards of 200 API calls per DAU. We’ve not yet had an app average greater than 300 API calls per DAU.

And note, brainCloud includes tools to help you assess and optimize your API Usage – to keep your costs (and our server usage) down.  Our costs go down, and your costs go down – win:win!

Free during development

We hope this clears up any questions you may have about pricing in brainCloud.

As always, brainCloud is free during development (up to 100 users), and if you sign up before March 6th, 2015, you lock in our special Early Adopter pricing until 2016!

Leading games technology company today announced the industry-wide availability of brainCloud, a streamlined backend solution for comprehensive, cloud-based game management.

Ottawa, Ontario, and Montreal International Games Summit (MIGS), Nov 12, 2014 — Previously only available to select game developers, bitHeads has officially launched brainCloud to support backend development and build revenue opportunities for game developers.

An out-of-the box solution for game development and management challenges, brainCloud is set to revolutionize the interactive games industry.brainCloud is a robust backend cloud-based production toolset that cuts game development time and costs by providing a one-stop solution that manages multiplayer features, monetization, cross-platform analytics, promotions, sales, and more. brainCloud works seamlessly with existing tools to operate and grow a game developers’ core business.

Dramatic shifts in mobile game development over the last five years demand fast-paced development that integrates innovative tools and drive user engagement while providing effective analytics and monetization strategies. To be commercially viable, games require multi-platform and multi-network support, game management systems, deployment, and advanced analytics. Addressing this need, brainCloud is an advanced solution within the emerging category of the cloud-based platform tools for games development.

Key brainCloud features include:

• Game Features – multiplayer, matchmaking, cloud-saves, identity management, social integration, leaderboards, achievements, push notifications, virtual currencies, and in-app purchasing. Using the JavaScript-supported brainCloud Cloud Code feature, developers are able to build in additional features.
• Local Platform Integration – when a player is awarded an Achievement in brainCloud, that achievement is also triggered in iOS GameCenter.
• Advanced Pricing and Promotional Features – brainCloud provides support for multiple virtual currencies and coordinates the product and pricing management across all platforms, allowing the developer to quickly put items on sale with just a few clicks.
• Scheduled Promotions – sales can be pre-configured well into the future and when the promotion automatically triggers, players will receive notifications on their devices (in their language), and automatically get the preferential pricing when they go into their store screens.
• Advanced Auto Promotions – developers are able to define dynamic target segments of users and trigger individual promotions just for them. For example, a developer could define a promotion for “MVPs that may be leaving the game” – and define the criteria as “players who’ve played > 50 times, who’ve spent > $20, and who haven’t played in the past 5 days”. Whenever a player enters this segment, a special “Promotion for MVPs” would be triggered, offering them a product at a huge discount, in an attempt to keep them in the game longer.

“Auto Promotions are just the beginning of the sort of advanced monetization features that bitHeads has in store for brainCloud,” notes brainCloud product manager Paul Winterhalder. “There’s no limit to the sort of advanced features that we can build to help developers to better engage and monetize their communities.”

“Having worked with the team at brainCloud on multiple projects, they definitely know their stuff when it comes highly-scalable back-ends,” says Stu Duncan, founder of Bight Games, the creators of ‘The Simpsons: Tapped Out”.

“Before building our latest game, Project Cyber, we looked at a number of backend-as-a-service platforms. None of them had as complete a game feature set as brainCloud”, says Spearhead Games co-founder Atul Mehra.

Wanda Meloni, CEO of M2 Research explains, “Solutions such as brainCloud now offer small-to-mid-size developers the sort of back-end infrastructure previously only available to larger developers such as Zynga, King.com and Supercell. Providing an out-of-the-box solution, bitHeads and brainCloud are really leveling the playing field.”

Outlining key findings from M2 Research’s upcoming State of Game Development Report Meloni notes, “Independent developers with less than 25 employees now make up 62% of the games development market, while mid to large scale indies represent another 13%. With 75% of the total game development market made up of independent teams, optimizing backend infrastructure is critical for developers looking to build in cross-platform development, monetization and ultimately cost savings.”

“bitHeads has been building customized backend solutions for clients since 1995. The growth and need in the market is there, and with brainCloud we have built a robust and scalable platform that helps developers concentrate on what they do best – make great games. We help them get games out faster, save on development, hosting and maintenance costs, and have built-in features specifically created to increase revenue,” says Scott Simpson, CEO of bitHeads.

Developers who sign up before December 31, 2014 qualify for special early adopter pricing until 2016. Sign up for a free trial now at getbraincloud.com.

ABOUT BITHEADS: For nineteen years, bitHeads has been building games and network development solutions for some of the most well respected brands in business today. Providing secure, custom development solutions bitHeads is a leading provider of cloud and backend infrastructure, mobile, big data and M2M solutions. brainCloud has been developed in partnership with the Canada Media Fund.

For more information on brainCloud please visit: www.getbraincloud.com

Visit our website for further information on the parent company: www.bitheads.com

CONTACT DETAILS:

Melissa Brown, CEO
Five Leaf Clover, Inc.
Mel@fiveleafcloverinc.com
+1 (858) 382-8392

We’re pleased to announce the full public availability of brainCloud 2.0.0!

New features in this release include:

API Features

• Global Properties – now sends user language, region, and timezone to brainCloud server on login.
• Misc fixes and improvements

Portal Features

• Automated Promotions – promotions can now be automated (ie when a user joins a target segment).
• Segments – further refinements to criteria
• Misc fixes and improvements

We’re pleased to announce the availability of brainCloud 1.9.0!

New features in this release include:

API Features

• Unity Client – now sends user language, region, and timezone to brainCloud server on login.
• Windows Phone IAP support – now able to verify windows phone IAP receipts
• Misc fixes and improvements

Portal Features

• Multiple Language Notifications – notifications will now be sent according to the user’s language preference
• Scheduled Promotions – promotions can be scheduled for a specific time range and can apply based on user segments. Allows dynamic pricing adjustments to be made.
• Segments – new criteria added to segments
• Misc fixes and improvements

We’re pleased to announce the availability of brainCloud 1.8.3!

New features in this release include:

API Features

• Google Play Store IAP Receipt Validation – clients can now validate IAP receipts from the Google Play Store.
• Misc fixes and improvements

Portal Features

• One Way Match Multiplayer Monitoring – new page to view the multiplayer match state and logs. Super useful for debugging!
• Global Monitoring – added a number of handy ways to sort/filter logs.
• Import/Export – now includes all cloud scripts and S3 files for the game.
• Cloud Scripts – can now define test parameters per script
• Player Monitoring Log – got a facelift!
• Game Config – added a max concurrent sessions parameter to control how many concurrent sessions a user can have running
• Notifications – now able to define templates and send to users
• Segments – added additional criteria
• Misc fixes and improvements

Game companies can no longer focus solely on designing fun – today’s studios are adapting the free-to-play business model and with it the increased focus on accessibility, monetization, conversion rates, social acquisition, and constant evolution.

With the new models and platforms of today, large developers are increasingly building and integrating cloud services into their games, to better tap into and maximize the Free-to-Play business model.

Given the essential nature of these systems, it is no wonder that many companies choose to implement their own back-end. In fact, as of August 2014, 49 of the top 50 Top Grossing iOS games were all utilizing custom backend solutions that cost millions of dollars to build.

Which is fine if you are a top tier developer who’s already had your big hit in the market. But what if you’re not?

A better way

Over the years, we at brainCloud have built our fair share of these back-ends — for everything from online casinos and arena shooters, to top-tier mobile games like Simpsons: Tapped Out.

We know from experience that there is a ton of common features in all of these back-ends, and that every custom solution ends up having game-specific logic and often significant compromises in it’s implementation. (And, without exception, extreme gaps in their tools support).

We realized that there had to be a better way. A way to design a system that could be used out-of-the-box by a huge variety of game types, customized where necessary, and deployed in a rapid fashion to support the tight development schedules and budgets of today’s gaming market.

Presenting brainCloud – a Backend for Gaming

And so, we’re pleased to present brainCloud – the result of three years of development, countless years of experience in the industry, and all our best thinking. We call it a “Backend in a Box” – and it’s so much more than the competing solutions out there.

We start with all the key gaming features you need —multiplayer, matchmaking, cloud data, leaderboards,achievements, identity management, social integration, in-app purchase support, push notifications — we’ve got you covered.

Add the confidence of knowing that if there’s something that we don’t yet do – you can implement it yourself using our Cloud Code feature (server-based scripting in JavaScript).

To keep you productive, we provide native libraries for all the major platforms and game engines (Unity, Cocos2d-x, Unreal) – so you won’t mucking about making your own http/rest calls (unless you want to).

And we’ve paired those libraries up with the most feature-rich tools in the business – that support your entire team through the design, development, testing+support andproduct management cycles of your product.

And finally, the best for last – we’ve built upon this platform a set of advanced Promotions features that enable you to identify and target key segments of your player base and engaged them in individualized promotions – providing you the means to increase conversion, retention, and engagement – igniting your game’s monetization to new levels.

I look forward to taking a deeper dive into brainCloud with you in the coming weeks – stay tuned – and happy coding!

We’re pleased to announce the availability of brainCloud 1.8.2!

New features in this release include:

API Features

• Update Shared Entities – clients can now make updates to shared player entities.
• Misc fixes and improvements

Portal Features

• API Explorer – The API explorer now automatically uses your email address for authentication. As well navigating away from the page and back again will save your session state.
• Misc fixes and improvements

We’re pleased to announce the availability of brainCloud 1.8.1!

New features in this release include

API Features

• Global Entity Count – new API to request Global Entity Counts from the portal before fetching the data itself.
• Misc fixes and improvements

Portal Features

• New Leaderboard Type – now you can define a leaderboard that always takes the last score posted. In the portal, use the “LAST_VALUE” type.
• Global Entity Improvements – the portal provides options to filter and delete Global Entities displayed in the Global Monitoring section.
• Misc Fixes

We’re pleased to announce the availability of brainCloud 1.8 – and along with that announce that from here on out we’ll be updating brainCloud every two weeks!

New features in this release include:

API Features

• Misc fixes and improvements

Portal Features

• Online Support – we’ve integrated with intercom.io to give you the best support experience possible. If you need assistance, just click on the green [?] in the bottom-right-hand corner of the screen, and we’ll help!  Note – you can also e-mail support@18.220.113.13.
• Product + Pricing revamp – we’ve totally re-designed our product and pricing management system to make it easier to use (and to pave the way for more powerful features coming soon!)
• Forgot Password support – now if you forget your brainCloud password, you won’t need another administrator to reset it for you!
• New leaderboard configuration screen – better, more intuitive layout!