Google Play Games is a pretty decent service when built-in to a game, offering a number of great features, but apparently some of those features aren’t really used and Google has announced this morning they will be removing them.
According to Google, the big one here is the removal of support for iOS for Google Play Games Services GPGS, moving forward. Google has removed the support for iOS thanks to what they say is a lack of interest and the result of developer feedback.
Also as a result of developer feedback, Google will be removing Gifts, Requests, and Quests from GPGS for Android. Google will phase these out over the next year, with support ending on the 31st of March 2018. Google also cited a lack of usage of those functions as a reason for removal.
Features that will remain in GPGS include Account Sign-in, Achievements, Leaderboards and Multiplayer.
In the announcement post, James Smith, Product Manager, Google Play has announced that analytics will be a strong part of Google Play moving forward, with Firebase Analytics already baked into GPGS. Firebase also now natively supports Unity and C++ developers.
There’s a lot of changes about to hit Google Play Games, and hopefully they’ll be for the better.
