Firebase is returning to the Game Developers Conference this year in San Francisco! We've been hard at work making Firebase more valuable for all you game developers out there, and would love to spend time talking with you about how we can make it even better.
While we'll be available to chat at booth 823 for the rest of the conference, we also dropped by the Google Developer Day on Monday to share a few exciting announcements with everybody. In case you missed it, here's the quick summary:
Firebase Auth already lets your players log in safely and securely through a variety of ways -- everything from using their Facebook or Google account to a custom email and password -- but we've now added support for players to sign in using Google Play Games Services (GPGS).
If you're currently using GPGS in your game, you can use the credentials you already have to authenticate your users' accounts with the Firebase service. And if you haven't used GPGS in your Android games yet, you really should because it's an easy -- and often frictionless -- way to get your players signed in. Either way, this means your game can start using Firebase to store user-specific data in Realtime Database or Cloud Storage as soon as your players are signed in through GPGS.
While many of you are developing games for mobile devices, we know that it's often much more convenient to build and test your game on a desktop machine. With that in mind, we've added desktop support so that Firebase will work right from your development environment (Unity player on a Windows machine, for example). This support includes products like:
So if your game relies on one of these products, you can continue to use the same development process you always have, without the hassle of deploying your game on a device every time you want to test it.
Note that desktop support is intended to make development and testing easier, but it's not for publishing Firebase-enabled games to end users on desktop machines.
We debuted Firebase Predictions and A/B Testing at the Firebase Developer Summit in Amsterdam a few months ago, but we think both of these features are so useful to game developers that we want to mention them again. :)
Firebase Predictions brings the power of machine learning to Firebase. By analyzing your players' behavior, we can predict which ones will be most likely to churn out, spend money, or perform any other conversion event that you've defined in Analytics. This allows you to customize your app's behavior (using Remote Config or Notifications) specifically to that group of users. Want to engage players who are likely to stop playing your game? Give them extra lives, or send them a free gift they can redeem inside your game! Want to target players who are likely to spend money on in-app purchases? Notify them about a big sale, or change the layout of your in-app store!
In fact, Rockbite Studios did just that. They used Remote Config to feature certain items at the top of their in-app store for players who were predicted to spend money in their game, while also adding new ad-viewing options for players who were predicted to not spend money. As a result, they boosted revenue by 25% for their spenders, and 24% for their non-spenders!
Firebase A/B testing is great way to improve your game by making data-driven decisions based on experiments that you can run inside your app. Want to know if increasing the difficulty of your game will increase or decrease player engagement? Curious to learn if increasing the amount of premium currency your players start off with will increase or decrease your overall revenue? You can run experiments to uncover answers to all of these questions (and much much more) through Firebase A/B testing.
Firebase A/B testing is easy to get started with, as it runs on top of Remote Config and Analytics, which you might already be using. Experiments can be set up entirely through the Firebase console, which means your game designers or analysts can build, publish, and analyze experiments on their own without needing too much time from your engineering team. And it's all available at no cost to you, which is always nice.
If you want to learn more about how Firebase can make it easier for you to build successful games, come talk to us! We'll be available at booth 823 all during the expo, and we're giving a special presentation on what's new with Firebase and the Google Cloud Platform on Wednesday, March 21st, at 3:30 in the South Hall.
And of course, you can always find out more at https://firebase.google.com/games/
Game on!
Firebase Remote Config is a simple way for you to change elements of your app on the fly, just by using the Firebase console. As developers used Remote Config, many of you requested the ability to change these values without having to go through the Firebase console at all. We're happy to announce that you can now update your Remote Config values directly through the new Remote Config REST API.
The API itself consists of two calls: one to retrieve the current set of Remote Config values from the console, and another to set them. And to be clear, these are designed only for the purpose of setting remote config values without going through the Firebase console. If you want your clients to retrieve these values, they should do so through the native mobile client SDKs.
With this new API, you have the ability to make Remote Config more useful for your team, by creating in-house tools that incorporate specific logic that would be impossible to do from the Firebase console alone. Some examples include:
...and you've probably got a great idea or two we haven't even thought of yet.
The REST API is available starting today for anybody who wants to use it with their project, so give it a try! As always, if you have any questions about the REST API, or just want to show off some fun new tool you've built, please contact us in the Firebase Talk group, or on Stack Overflow.
At Firebase, it's our mission to help developers like you build better apps and grow your businesses. That means Firebase needs to work for you from your first user up to your millionth, with pricing plans that scale as you do.
Today, we're excited to announce that we're changing our Blaze (pay-as-you-go) plan to align with the free usage that we offer on our Spark (free) plan. To view more detail about these free usage limits, including a pricing calculator, you can check out our pricing page or scroll to the end of this blog post.
If you're on the Blaze plan and stay within these free usage limits, you will not be charged for the month and you will not receive a bill. You'll be charged for any usage above these limits at the same rates as before. The Spark and Flame (subscription) plans remain unchanged.
We've also heard your concerns about exceeding specific limits on the Blaze plan. Now, you can set up alerts, so you get notified when you're reaching usage thresholds, and set budgets in the billing section of the Firebase Console. You can choose project or billing level budgets and specific alerting thresholds.
This update will also make it easier for you to use Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services. The credit card you use for the Blaze plan is also a payment method for GCP. We know that previously, it was tough to justify adding a payment method when you would lose your free tier on Firebase. With this change, you can safely upgrade to the Blaze plan to use a GCP service without it affecting your Firebase costs.
There are a few minor differences between the Spark plan and the free usage within the Blaze plan.
As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us. We hope these pricing changes simplify your life and let you focus on what matters: building a great app. Happy coding!
*July 11 Edit: An earlier version of this blog post said that Firebase Crash Reporting will continue to be functional until September 8th, 2018 - at which point it will be retired fully. To clarify, that means that Firebase Crash Reporting will be accessible on September 8, 2018 and will no longer be accessible on September 9, 2018.*
Back in October, we were thrilled to launch a beta version of Firebase Crashlytics. As the top ranked mobile app crash reporter for over 3 years running, Crashlytics helps you track, prioritize, and fix stability issues in realtime. It's been exciting to see all the positive reactions, as thousands of you have upgraded to Crashlytics in Firebase!
Today, we're graduating Firebase Crashlytics out of beta. As the default crash reporter for Firebase going forward, Crashlytics is the next evolution of the crash reporting capabilities of our platform. It empowers you to achieve everything you want to with Firebase Crash Reporting, plus much more.
This release include several major new features in addition to our stamp of approval when it comes to service reliability. Here's what's new.
We heard from many of you that you love Firebase Crash Reporting's "breadcrumbs" feature. (Breadcrumbs are the automatically created Analytics events that help you retrace user actions preceding a crash.) Starting today, you can see these breadcrumbs within the Crashlytics section of the Firebase console, helping you to triage issues more easily.
To use breadcrumbs on Crashlytics, install the latest SDK and enable Google Analytics for Firebase. If you already have Analytics enabled, the feature will automatically start working.
By broadly analyzing aggregated crash data for common trends, Crashlytics automatically highlights potential root causes and gives you additional context on the underlying problems. For example, it can reveal how widespread incorrect UIKit rendering was in your app so you would know to address that issue first. Crash insights allows you to make more informed decisions on what actions to take, save time on triaging issues, and maximize the impact of your debugging efforts.
From our community:
"In the few weeks that we've been working with Crashlytics' crash insights, it's been quite helpful on a few particularly pesky issues. The description and quality of the linked resources makes it easy to immediately start debugging." - Marc Bernstein, Software Development Team Lead, Hudl
- Marc Bernstein, Software Development Team Lead, Hudl
Generally, you have a few builds you care most about, while others aren't as important at the moment. With this new release of Crashlytics, you can now "pin" your most important builds which will appear at the top of the console. Your pinned builds will also appear on your teammates' consoles so it's easier to collaborate with them. This can be especially helpful when you have a large team with hundreds of builds and millions of users.
To show you stability issues, Crashlytics automatically uploads your dSYM files in the background to symbolicate your crashes. However, some complex situations can arise (i.e. Bitcode compiled apps) and prevent your dSYMs from being uploaded properly. That's why today we're also releasing a new dSYM uploader tool within your Crashlytics console. Now, you can manually upload your dSYM for cases where it cannot be automatically uploaded.
With today's GA release of Firebase Crashlytics, we've decided to sunset Firebase Crash Reporting, so we can best serve you by focusing our efforts on one crash reporter. Starting today, you'll notice the console has changed to only list Crashlytics in the navigation. If you need to access your existing crash data in Firebase Crash Reporting, you can use the app picker to switch from Crashlytics to Crash Reporting.
Firebase Crash Reporting will continue to be functional until September 8th, 2018 - at which point it will be retired fully.
Upgrading to Crashlytics is easy: just visit your project's console, choose Crashlytics in the left navigation and click "Set up Crashlytics":
If you're currently using both Firebase and Fabric, you can now link the two to see your existing crash data within the Firebase console. To get started, click "Link app in Fabric" within the console and go through the flow on fabric.io:
If you are only using Fabric right now, you don't need to take any action. We'll be building out a new flow in the coming months to help you seamlessly link your existing app(s) from Fabric to Firebase. In the meantime, we encourage you to try other Firebase products.
We are excited to bring you the best-in class crash reporter in the Firebase console. As always, let us know your thoughts and we look forward to continuing to improve Crashlytics. Happy debugging!
You have questions about Firebase, and the Firebase community has answers!
But do you know the best place to get your questions answered?
It can be kind of overwhelming to figure out which destination is the best for your particular question. What I'd like to explore today are your options, and how to choose the best one. Choosing the best (and knowing how best to ask) could give you a huge advantage in getting the answers you need. There are five leading options, each with a different purpose. Let's explore those options!
It might seems silly to say, but I think your question should start with a Google search. A well-constructed search could surface existing answers in some of the forums I'll discuss next. You can't pass up the chance of getting your question answered immediately because someone else asked it first!
Try entering your question directly into the search box. Or, if you have an error message in your code, try copying it in there. For exact error messages, sometimes it's helpful to put your search string in quotes to force the most relevant matches to the top of the results.
Bear in mind that not every search yields good results. In some cases, you might stumble across something so rare that only one other person has ever seen it!
That time I searched for "ERROR: Walrus not found: have you checked the polar ice caps?"
If a search doesn't give what you're looking for, it's time to choose from some other options.
But before we continue - if you end up deciding that your question is appropriate for multiple forums, be sure to state that you've cross-posted your question. That gives everyone a chance to figure out which forum may be the best options, and if the question has already been answered elsewhere. That saves everyone time.
Stack Overflow is great for programming questions. In fact, that's the only kind of question you're supposed to ask there. Many Firebase team members pay attention there, including members of the greater community. There are a few tips to making the best of your question on SO:
Not all questions are good for Stack Overflow. In particular, your question may be closed by the community if it's any of the following:
If your question is closed by the community, it will almost certainly not be answered. But don't worry: for questions about Firebase that don't follow the Stack Overflow requirements, there are other options!
Quora is great for general questions, especially those seeking recommendations and opinions. There doesn't have to be a "correct" answer to a question on Quora. It's OK to ask broad questions.
If you choose Quora, be sure to tag your question with the Firebase topic so it's more likely to get noticed by people who have experience with Firebase.
firebase-talk is a long-standing mailing list for people who are looking for open-ended discussion about all things Firebase. It's great for open-ended discussions that require a lot of text that goes back and forth between group members. Many Firebase team members scan the messages here.
When you post your first message here, be prepared to wait for some time for a moderator to accept it.
The Firebase Slack is where Firebase enthusiasts gather to talk about, well, Firebase! This is good for general chit-chat and gathering opinions. While some Firebase team members check in from time to time, it's not an official support channel. So if you have a question that better fits Stack Overflow or Quora, I think it's better to ask there first.
One notable exception is the Firebase Test Lab team who use the #test-lab channel for direct support.
Here's a couple tips for using the Firebase Slack effectively:
This is a good place to ask for urgent issues such as problems with your production app. It's also good for troubleshooting if you require some back and forth with a real person with a problem that can be reproduced in code. You can expect a response from support within 24 hours of asking your question.
Firebase support also handles bug reports and feature requests. So if you have one of those, please fill out the form in that link.
If you want a timely response, I would avoid the following destinations for general questions:
The other reason I would avoid these is because they have limited visibility to the world, whereas the destinations above are well known by the Firebase community. You probably want your question to reach the maximum number of people as possible, in order to get answered quickly.
However, we do encourage you to use Twitter and other social media to broadcast the questions you ask on other sites. For example, it's good to ask a question on Stack Overflow or Quora, then tweet the URL of the question with the hashtag #AskFirebase. Your questions may get picked up for use on the Firebase channel on YouTube.
The Firebase community loves to help with Firebase! And it's easier to get help if you follow the guidelines here to make sure your questions reach the correct audience.
Now watch this video with Kato Richardson, who loves our Firebase community!
