Developer's Guide to Releasing a Unity Game on Google Play

[@Eculeus007]

I congratulate everyone who has come this far

[@LlamAcademy]

Definitely! It takes a lot to make it to this point

[@RudolphThomas]

It took me a few days to figure it out the first time ;-)

[@mattsponholz8350]

Where were you 7 years ago when I released my first Google play game??? As always, excellent video and thank you :)

[@LlamAcademy]

Hmm… 7 years ago I was about 6 months into development of my first desktop game ever and first Unity game… a multiplayer first person hide and seek game 😅

[@mattsponholz8350]

@@LlamAcademy Nice! Happy we found you!

[@RudolphThomas]

Thanks for making this video. Although I have released an app made with Unity a while ago it was a nice refresher to quickly get through the publishing maze.

[@LlamAcademy]

You’re welcome ☺️. I know it was a struggle for me so I was hoping the guidance would be useful for others

[@FoolishCrow]

Is the next video how the game is released on Steam? Oh my god!! I'll look forward to it.

[@LlamAcademy]

😅 that one might be a ways out. I haven't released a game on Steam since 2017 and I'm sure the process has changed. I am planning to start a game some time this year that will be released on Steam eventually, so once I go through the process again I'll keep that one in mind 😉

[@AletseDev]

Nice video chris, this video is worth gold, keep it goin !! :D

[@LlamAcademy]

Hey, thanks! ☺

[@KhianVictoryDCalderon]

Thank you, i now published my first game in play store with your help. It's called "Blue Ball 2D"

[@LlamAcademy]

Congratulations! 🎉 That's a huge achievement!

[@KhianVictoryDCalderon]

@@LlamAcademy Thank you

[@dreamisover9813]

Very helpful topic, thanks!

[@windup247]

Thanks so much for walking us through this! When I get to internal testing it says choose signing key. Do we use the one we generated in Unity?

[@ZeroToTenB]

Thank you!!

[@LlamAcademy]

You’re very welcome!

[@ВалерийГеннадьевич-в6ц]

Thanks for the video

[@LlamAcademy]

You’re welcome 🙌

[@alexis17642]

Merci beaucoup !

[@LlamAcademy]

De rien!

[@itswilly]

You rocks man. plans to IOS too?

[@LlamAcademy]

You know it 😉

[@arabiannights7183]

Sometimes the app is approved and says published but when i search in google play store it doesn't show up in the search results. When i click on. Other apps from this developer (me) it shows other apps but not the one not showing up. Why is that

[@okandikkulak8057]

hey! what is your latest game we can play ? I love your content

[@LlamAcademy]

🙂 thanks! I’m in the middle of a huge update to my latest Android/ iOS game now, upgrading to URP, pretty big graphics and gameplay overhaul, and fully offline support all are in progress. survival.llama.software has the App Store links, but it may have been pulled from the App Stores because I haven’t updated the billing library and I think it is past due. Hoping for this update to launch in the first half of the year with all that so I can move on to the next one 🤞

[@JayadevHaddadi]

super cool! GJ :)

[@Logicalflap]

Sorry for my bad English It's been like 6 days since i submitted my app to closed testing and the only thing i got so far is a Gmail from Google that they want some information in order to review my app I answered the Gmail yesterday but the game is still not available for closed testers to download Any idea why this happens or what is their time intervals?

[@timtim6886]

Hey can you do a serie about Google Play Service in Unity ? Like LeaderBoard, Achievements etc ... Btw, when I build my android application and download it from my usb cable (or other method outside Google Store) Google Play services work perfectly. However, when I download my application from the Google Store, the Google Play services do not work. Someone can tell me why ? It the logs error I only receive "cancel"

[@LlamAcademy]

I don't think I'll likely get to that in the near future. I'm planning on wrapping up my Android/iOS game this year and moving on to another project. For my game I used PlayFab for leaderboards which worked pretty well, and is more likely that I would cover that since I had hands-on experience already there. For your problem, it's hard to say without having the full project available. It sounds like it may be improperly configured the Google Play distribution

[@timtim6886]

@@LlamAcademy didn't know about playfab thank you for this. I will try it

[@anumfaizan7401]

Wow great work keep it going 👏 👍 👌 💪 🙌 🙂 👏 👍 👌 💪 🙌 🙂 👏

[@anumfaizan7401]

But can you make it free I'dont want to pay 20 dollars

[@haarissheikh3187]

Hi, thank you so much for this very helpful video. I wanted to ask how can you create 2 apps to go on the stores using the same unity project? I want to release a free demo first. Then the full priced game later. Thank you

[@LlamAcademy]

For a demo versus full game, you should determine how you want the demo to be limited, is it time? is it progress? You can have a demo that is built with only 1 or 2 scenes to limit the progress if that fits your game. Otherwise you can have them play only up to point X and include only the relevant scenes up to that point in the demo so the player can't proceed any further.

[@haarissheikh3187]

@@LlamAcademy thank you for your reply. I do have a system in place and I can always configure the build levels in build settings. I mean when it comes to the 'version' and 'bundle version code'. Will google play allow me to upload a new app using the same project. Do I just increase the 'bundle version code' number?

[@LlamAcademy]

Sorry for the delay here. I don’t think google allows you to do demos like that. For mobile games, I can think up 2 approaches. One is to release the demo as a standalone app under a different app ID and have that work as I described, where at the end it prompts the user to continue playing they can purchase the full version and link them to the store page for that one. The other option would be to have your game free, and the “free” portion is the demo. Once the player gets to the end they purchase an “In App Purchase” that unlocks something that allows them to keep playing. Both have pros and cons, like the second way May be misleading because the app isn’t really free, but it allows very low friction to continue playing. First way is more accurate in terms of pricing, but the player has to do more and download more to keep going.

[@haarissheikh3187]

@@LlamAcademy that's ok. Umm so I just want them to play 5 levels in the demo for free. Hopefully make player want to fund the kickstater for the full game development. Then later release another app that will charge them $5 dollars for the final game. I think that should be possible.

[@LlamAcademy]

Either option should work there. Make sure to link them to the kickstarter at the end of the demo!

[@SMDev11]

I noticed you didn't cover the business address which is required for iap and paid apps. If you choose the personal account option, does it still show the address under the contact information?

[@LlamAcademy]

I believe it does, but I do not have a personal account to validate with. With my business account it does show the address

[@BrandonBrady97484]

Will updating your game wipe players data?

[@LlamAcademy]

It should not. If you use PlayerPrefs it stores it in a location that as long as your company name and project name do not change, it should persist. If you use Application.persistentDataPath you should be good there too. And of course if you use a cloud save you are also safe!

[@Bloop_O]

So i need to verify my account and Idk what to do ;-;

[@popcornfun8485]

If you are talking about the "proof-of-organization documents" I require that info too. Dono what to do.

[@LlamAcademy]

Hopefully the official docs from google can help you out here: support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6112435

[@martinleykauf6857]

Lmao. The suspended Toilet Paper Hoarder game. 🚽 Thanks for the infos man!

[@LlamAcademy]

🤣 I was very sad they wouldn’t let me release that.

[@sigridopps3049]

Pretty good tutorial, only you could really work on talking more clearly since you tend to fall into a mumbling kind of talking

[@LlamAcademy]

Thank you for the feedback I will try to improve on this going forward

[@imminentinteractive8167]

Hey, great video. The data collection form is a real pain to fill out, If you are using Unity Ads or Analytics or any of their other services they have a page that outlines what data they collect and for what purpose, it's super useful: docs.unity.com/ugs-overview/GoogleDataSafety.html

[@LlamAcademy]

Great resource! Thank you for that. I'll add it to the Resources section of the description

[@zeeshansattar4531]

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception. * What went wrong: Execution failed for task ':launcher:minifyReleaseWithProguard'. > java.io.IOException: Can't read [C:\Program Files\Unity\Hub\Editor\2021.3.11f1\Editor\Data\PlaybackEngines\AndroidPlayer\SDK\platforms\android-33\optional\android.car.jar] (Can't process class [android/car/Car$CarServiceLifecycleListener.class] (Unsupported version number [55.0] (maximum 54.0, Java 10))) * Try: Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace. Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output. Run with --scan to get full insights. * Get more help at help.gradle.org BUILD FAILED in 11s Picked up JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS: -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 UnityEngine.GUIUtility:ProcessEvent (int,intptr,bool&) Got this error, when I changed API level to 33, any idea how to solve this?

[@LlamAcademy]

This sounds like incompatible Java versions. Perhaps you have a more recent version on your PATH. If you do not do any Java development it may be best to uninstall all Java versions and allow Unity to manage it.

[@zeeshansattar4531]

@@LlamAcademy okay got it, let me try that. Thanks