Questions About PlayFab Costs and Plans for a Match-3 Game

[fleet moss]

Hi,

I’m currently developing a match-3 game and anticipating an initial player base of 20k-30k. I have a few questions regarding implementation and cost estimation:

Reward System Implementation:
I plan to give players rewards for completing levels (200 levels in total). My current approach involves:

Calling Azure to process the reward logic.
Using GetUserDataRequest in Azure to verify completion (to prevent cheating).
Updating currency with AddUserVirtualCurrencyRequest in PlayFab.
This totals 3 calls per reward: 1 to Azure and 2 to PlayFab.

How can I estimate the costs of these calls?
Are there alternative approaches you’d recommend to make this system more cost-efficient?
Choosing the Right Plan:
I’m currently in Development Mode (PlayFab shows I’m on the Free plan). If I release the game under this plan and later upgrade, will the upgrade take effect immediately?

I’m considering starting with the Standard Plan for the first month and switching to Pay-As-You-Go later if necessary. Does this sound like a good approach?

To provide more context, I’ve attached a screenshot of PlayFab’s plan recommendations when I had 60+ test players.

Thank you for your help! I want to ensure I manage costs effectively while maintaining a smooth player experience.

[ionic ferry]

There are a few questions here, I'll try to get them all but let me know if I miss something.

How can I estimate the costs of these calls?

Generally, you can learn about pricing here https://playfab.com/pricing/ then there are some details links for each product to learn more. It looks like you're most interested in Profile.

GetUserData is going to activate the profile read meter. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/playfab/features/pricing/meters/meters#profile
For profile reads pay close attention to the way weighted reads/writes works, its the same for both profile and telemetry. Generally, if your request is less than 1kb you'll be metered 1 read per request. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/playfab/features/pricing/meters/meters#example-weighted-events-calculation

AddUserVirtualCurrency is a legacy economy api, so that data is going to be stored in the profile too and can be calculated the same way as profile writes. Writes can be a little harder to track because profile data is bucketed into different blobs. Whenever a write operation happens, that whole player blob has to be written not just the new data. I'm not sure which blob the currency data would end up in so you might have to experiment to be sure. I'm happy to see you're already running test players! You may be able to use the consumption quantities under current usage to extrapolate what your launch player base might consume.

Using these api's probably also triggers some playstream events. I couldn't tell you which ones. But set up a little prototype and see what comes across your title dashboard, you should be able to see them there.

Are there alternative approaches you’d recommend to make this system more cost-efficient?

Its admittedly not the most up-to-date doc we have, but there are best practices recommendations here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/playfab/features/pricing/consumption-best-practices

I think what your describing for call pattern sounds perfectly reasonable, in fact I have an azure function that does the exact same for a project of mine.

If you want to be thrifty and you data size is small you can save some consumption by batching calls rather than updating every time. If you expect players to blaze through levels in sets of 5 for example, maybe only update every 5 levels. Make it a part of the game interface 'Finish 5 to earn your bonus!' to encourage players to finish the set. But it's probably early to think of that kind of optimization.

I’m considering starting with the Standard Plan for the first month and switching to Pay-As-You-Go later if necessary. Does this sound like a good approach?

It's an approach I see often. You'd gain the advantage of having ticketed support during your launch month which is definitely good to have, and if you really do expect 20-30k MAU on launch you'll likely save money on consumption that way depending on what else your game is doing.

Predicting traffic is tricky, unfortunately all you can do is make an educated guess based on your market research and how much interest your pre-launch media is getting.

Do take note about plans to get ready for your launch. Plan changes only take place on the 1st of the following month. So if you intend to launch on February 10th for example, if you want to be on Standard on that day you'll need to schedule an upgrade to Standard before the end of January. It would take affect February 1st.

Thanks for doing this research ahead of your launch, best luck!

[fleet moss]

WOW, thank you so much! You answered all my questions perfectly! 😊

I'm ready to launch and have done some predictions using ChatGPT—it seems my costs will be around $100–$200 for 9,000 players and approximately $700 for 45,000 players over 30 days.

I have one additional question about upgrading:

If I upgrade to the Standard Plan today, will it only take effect on 1.1.2025?
I’m planning to release my game at the end of this month (30.12)—is there anything I can do with support to apply the plan earlier, or should I consider other options?
Thanks again for all the helpful advice! 🙌

[ionic ferry]

Yes, if you upgrade today it would take effect on January 1st. You could try submitting a billing question through the contact form to see about making it effective earlier https://playfab.com/contact/ but given the holiday season I don't know what the turn-around on those tickets are right now. They aren't subject to the 24 hour turn-around time the paid technical tickets are.

The good news is that if you can't get it activated before then it won't block your launch. As soon as you have the plan change scheduled you should be able to launch your titles and not be subject to the development mode limits.

[fleet moss]

Thank you for the information! I’ll proceed with upgrading the package today. I’ll also reach out to support to check if it’s possible to apply the upgrade before January 1st.

[fleet moss]

Hi, we completed the upgrade, but the system reverted us back to the development plan. We’ve already reached out to support and are still waiting for a response. Is there any way you could expedite the process? We're eager to release the title.

[ionic ferry]

That's not great, private message me your title id and I'll investigate

[fleet moss]

Thank you :), I tried update it but its saying it will be activated until next month,
for now we delayed the launchto next week until we solve this 🙂 thank you

[fleet moss]

Its seems that I stil in development I tried to launch the title but it does nothing

Nvm it worked but why do i need to pay 198$ ? as I only started this month so it should be 99$