Difference between Unity MultiPlay and PlayFab

Sorry for the dumb question.

I plan to implement leaderboards, and in app purchasing in my game. It is to my understanding that I can just save inventory locally - it is easier to hack that way, so I need some type of secure server solution.

Additionally, I plan to make an online multiplayer game in the future.

I know that PlayFab handles all of that. But I also know that Unity has a solution for multiplayer called Unity Multiplay: https://unity.com/products/multiplay

May I ask, what is the difference between the two solutions, as it pertains to multiplayer gaming? Is one noticeably recommended? Are the the same type of service? etc.?

 

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The focus of Unity Multiplay is hosting dedicated servers for multiplayer games. It doesn't do the "game backend/database" which is PlayFab's main draw.

PlayFab does have server hosting as well, but I don't have enough information to compare against Multiplay.

 

Thanks. They seem similar then; hosting servers for games is something that they do - execept it seems PlayFab uses the cloud?

Do you know if most game developers use both, or which one of the two they use, by any chance?

 

Both use cloud hosting. When I say "dedicaded server", what I mean is instances of a special build of your game which is meant to host real-time multiplayer matches.

These server instances last only as long as your matches do, and the whole point of using a service like Multiplay or PlayFab dedicated server hosting is for it to spawn/shutdown these on demand.

A dedicated server is not where you store leaderboards, inventories and such kind of permanent data.