Frequently Asked Questions

Which Photon product is the right one for me?

This is a difficult question to answer as it depends on the game you are making and the specifics of your project.
However we can recommend the following:

Watch this talk by our CTO and founder Chris Wegmann at Unite Europe 2017
Read the comparison page: "PUN vs. Bolt"
Read the comparison page: "Photon Cloud or Photon Server?"

Feel free to reach out to us if you still have questions.

What is the difference between Photon Realtime and PUN?

Photon Realtime wraps up all generic features needed for the load balancing of Photon. It is a product as much as a defined workflow to use Name Server, Master Server and Game Servers. Photon Realtime (a.k.a. LoadBalancing) is the basis for many games using Photon.

While Photon Realtime is independent from Unity, PUN adds many comfortable features for Unity and makes Realtime (the lower level) even easier to use.

Both products share the same backend, same server applications, same low-level stuff, same core concepts.
At first PUN was meant to be a better UNet (old Unity Networking): preserve a similar API with a more solid backend and rich features.
Then it slowly diverged and became the number 1 solution for multiplayer on Unity.

While we do have a Photon Realtime Unity SDK, PUN has more high level out-of-the-box features like:

Magic Unity callbacks
Extra Unity components that serialize and sync. networked objects for you: most important one PhotonView
PunRPC
Offline mode
...

What is the difference between LoadBalancing API and Photon Realtime?

LoadBalancing API and Photon Realtime can be two different names for the same thing.
The LoadBalancing API or the LoadBalancing Client API is the programming interface available in the client SDKs we provide for the Photon Realtime product.

Photon Cloud

Is Photon Cloud down?

You can check Photon Cloud status here or follow @photon_status on twitter to get notified about status updates.

What is the default Photon region?

Clients should be able to connect to Photon Cloud as long as at least one region is available.
So to guarantee this, a default value is configured or is used when the developer does not explicitly set one or choose "Best Region" option.
The default value could vary by client SDK.
In native SDKs, it is the value at index 0 of the region list returned by server in OpGetRegions.
On Unity and DotNet SDKs, the default region should be "EU".

Is it possible to disable some regions?

Yes.
It works in the other way around by defining a list of allowed regions.
Read more about the "Dashboard Regions Filtering".

Billing

Do you have special offers for students, hobbyists or indies?

All our products have a free tier and a one-off entry-plan.
We also usually take part in Unity's asset store sales and occasionally give vouchers to lucky ones.

Can I combine more than one 100 CCU plan for a single Photon application?

No.
The 100 CCU plans are not stackable and can be applied only once per AppId.
If you purchase multiple PUN+ asset seats then you must redeem each 100 free CCU for a separate AppId.
If you need more CCU for a single app, the next higher plan is the 500 CCU one.
If you subscribe to a monthly or yearly plan, then you will still keep the 100 CCUs for 12 months on top of / in addition to the CCU from your monthly/yearly plan.

Photon Cloud
Billing