Official Unity Analytics FAQs

This thread contains answers to frequently asked questions on the Unity Gaming Services Analytics package. We welcome your feedback and will add more answers to this thread as questions arise.

Feedback

In terms of feedback, we're especially looking for:

• Use cases that are important to you and your projects
• Workflows that are unclear or missing
• Features you'd like to see in future releases
• Questions or feedback on our documentation

Please share your feedback as new posts in this sub-forum.

How to report bugs with Analytics

Please submit bugs or feature requests by filling in the following form.

Thank you for your interest, we're looking forward to your feedback!

 

General FAQ

What change happened to Unity’s Analytics tools?
The Unity Analytics (Legacy Unity Analytics) service will be no longer available for use by new Unity projects as of June 22, 2022. Users will no longer be able to integrate Legacy Unity Analytics services and data capture into new projects. Instead, users can upgrade to the new Unity Gaming Services Analytics (UGS Analytics), which is now out of beta, through the Unity Gaming Services Dashboard.


What is Legacy Unity Analytics?
Legacy Unity Analytics was formerly called Unity Analytics. This was a service natively integrated into the Unity Editor, available within Unity Personal Edition, Unity Plus, Unity Pro, and Unity Enterprise. Legacy Unity Analytics enabled developers to capture insights into gameplay, monetization, and more, to create the best possible experience for players.


What is Unity Gaming Services?
Unity Gaming Services is an end-to-end platform that provides a broad range of services to help developers build, operate, and scale their games.


What is Unity Gaming Services Analytics?
Unity Gaming Services Analytics (UGS Analytics) is a new analytics service from Unity that is replacing the deprecated Legacy Unity Analytics. UGS Analytics gives studios the tools to understand performance and player behaviors through predefined Dashboards, Data Explorer, and more. In addition, the new UGS Analytics can be used with any game engine and is not limited to being used with the Unity engine.


Why is Unity making this change?
Unity is expanding its ability to support game developers across all phases of the development lifecycle, beyond our industry-leading game engine and ad tools. UGS Analytics is part of Unity Gaming Services, a portfolio of solutions to help developers build, manage, and grow their games. This product migration represents an upgrade over the Legacy Unity Analytics tool to offer it for use with other game engines, improve and expand the functionality of Unity’s analytics tools, and provide better interoperability with other Unity Gaming Services solutions.


Is there a cost associated with the new Analytics tools?
The new UGS Analytics solution provides a generous free tier that includes 25,000,000 events per month or 2,000 query seconds per month, and then a payment model that scales based on usage as your game grows and your projects’ needs increase. See the full pricing model for Unity Gaming Services here to learn more. If you are using Unity Gaming Services you can see your current usage here.


Note: You will notice the data from Legacy Unity Analytics is ported over into the new UGS Analytics platform. Unity offers the migrated event data from Legacy Unity Analytics at no additional cost to facilitate your transition and to ensure data continuity.


Which version of Unity’s analytics tools should I use for my new projects?
All new Unity projects should be created using the new UGS Analytics product by integrating the SDK, as the Legacy Unity Analytics services will no longer be available for new projects after June 22, 2022.


When will Legacy Analytics be shut down?
To ensure that our customers have a smooth experience onboarding to Unity Gaming Services Analytics, we will be postponing the Legacy Analytics shutdown date to June 27th, 2023.


I have a current project using Legacy Analytics, what does the shutdown mean for me?
Shutting down Legacy Analytics means that the Legacy Analytics dashboard will no longer be available to use to analyze your data. You will need to view all of your data through the UGS Analytics dashboard.


Do I lose Legacy Analytics data from older projects?
No, all your Core Events data from Legacy Analytics is automatically available in UGS Analytics Dashboard since July 2021 once you sign up to the Unity Gaming Services (UGS) (as long as the Legacy Analytics service was enabled in your project). The Unity Analytics team is currently working on making Custom Events available in UGS Analytics before shutting down the Legacy dashboard access.

For data continuity between both the Legacy Analytics and the new UGS Analytics platforms, we recommend using the userID that is provided by the Analytics SDK. This userID is shared between the two Analytics platforms and our data migration pipeline will use it to avoid the duplication of events.


My game is finished in production and I don’t want to make changes to my game code, how will this impact my game?
If your game doesn’t make use of any Custom Events via the Analytics Library package, then there is no further action required, by signing up to UGS you will see your data available automatically.

If you are making use of Custom Events and cannot make changes to your game code we recommend that you stay tuned for an upcoming announcement regarding the availability of custom events in UGS Analytics.


I am a new customer or starting a new Unity project in my account, what does this mean for me?
Projects can no longer switch to or sign-up for Legacy Analytics, new onboards will use UGS Analytics. Learn more about UGS Analytics here.


Do I need to pay to view and analyze project data from Legacy Analytics in UGS Analytics?
Unity Gaming Services does currently require a credit card to sign up; UGS Analytics is offered for free when using the Data Explorer and Funnels features to view and analyze your project data from Legacy Analytics.

You will only start to incur costs if you install the Analytics SDK and exceed the free tier. Or if you use SQL Data Explorer for querying and exceed the free tier. Check out the pricing tiers here.


How can I migrate my project to the new Analytics solutions?
Use this guide to learn how to upgrade from Legacy Unity Analytics to the new Unity Gaming Services Analytics.


How can we get help if we’re having trouble with our transition?
If you have any concerns or questions about your project and migration, please contact our support team, or reach out to your client partner so we can help you through this transition.

 

Product Related FAQ


What are the features/benefits of UGS Analytics?

Dashboards & Analysis Tools

• Out of the box dashboards to support indies
• 360 view of key metrics across activity, retention and revenue
• Easy multi-dimensional filtering
• Drop off analysis based on historical data via Funnels
• User acquisition channel analysis

Segmentation

• Audience segmentation considering player’s previous activity as well as the platform, country or version they are playing on
• Predefined list of Audiences
• Custom Audience builder

Improved Data Recency

• Data is refreshed every 2 hours max when upgrading to the Analytics SDK

Improved Usability

• Improved user interface
• Better data visualization
• Transparency around metric definitions

Game Overrides

• Changing of game settings and configurations in your game in real-time, without having to update the code via Remote Config Campaigns
• Audience targeting for game settings and config changes based on their player’s previous activity
• The ability to understand the impact of your Campaigns through Analytics reporting data

How can I get started with Analytics ?

1. Sign in to the Unity Services Dashboard.
2. Click Sign up in the top banner.
3. Click View SDKs and follow the instructions there to install your desired packages
4. Refer to the SDK installation guide here.
   

What are the differences between Legacy Unity Analytics and UGS Analytics?

• Data refresh time in Analytics is approximately one hour (versus eight hours on legacy)
• Built with player engagement in mind:
  • Audiences cover both stateful and stateless segmentation so you can segment by platform, location, and other basic dimensions, and also by the player’s activity, retention and monetization profile.
  • Audiences look back on historical data captured prior to audience creation while Legacy Unity Analytics considers data captured after the audience is created.
• Exploring your data in Analytics is simpler with:
  • Improved data visualization and overall usability when querying metrics and events (both standard and custom).
  • Enhanced event schema validation to prevent hacked events from polluting the data set.
  • Multi-dimensional filtering tailored to the project so you no longer need to create segments to cover basic use cases such as: how is my game performing in a specific country? Which is my best performing platform?
• Analytics offers Event Browser to debug your game’s event feed as they come in.

Are there any differences between the way the data is structured in Legacy Unity Analytics vs UGS Analytics?
If you’ve previously used Legacy Unity Analytics on your project and it’s still enabled, you’ll find that your standard events have been partially backfilled using your existing Analytics integration. This allows you to get a sneak peek of how the new analytics product will look and feel on your real data. While this can give you good insight into how your game is performing, it's only scratching the surface in terms of what our new analytics platform can offer.

The events used to calculate the dashboard KPIs & metrics that Analytics uses can be found here.

While we have made our best efforts to keep data consistent between Legacy Unity Analytics and Analytics , we’ve taken the opportunity to address customer feedback so there may be some slight inconsistencies when directly comparing the two. There are a number of reasons for this:

1. Analytics processes event data every one/two hours compared to the current general audience offering which processes event data every eight hours.
2. Stricter event structure has been introduced to ensure your data is consistent and flows in gameplay order.
3. Event data is processed in raw form to give you the flexibility to query, filter, and group your game data in Data Explorer.
4. Event data from Legacy Unity Analytics is available from July 2021 onwards. Players who installed your game prior to that date will be treated as new players and result in a peak in retention metrics.
5. Metrics are calculated differently in the beta offering. For example, session length is determined by calculating the time difference between events in a session compared to tracking the session length on the client’s device. Check out the KPI and metric explanations available in the dashboards and metric dropdown in data explorer.

Note: Custom events are only supported once the SDK is installed in your game.

You can use this guide to upgrade a game that is currently using Legacy Unity Analytics.


Do UGS Analytics and Player Engagement tools need to be used together?
Our products within Unity Gaming Services were built to be modular, so they can be used independently, but are generally more powerful when used together. For example, you can build Audiences within UGS Analytics , then target them or run A/B tests within Player Engagement for your Game Overrides.


What platforms are supported?
UGS Analytics supports the following platforms:

• iOS
• Android
• Desktop (Windows, Linux, Mac)
• Console (Switch, PS, Xbox) - no support for offline cache (events are lost if game closes)

How can I submit feedback?
Please submit any feedback, bugs or feature requests by filling in the following form. We’ll also be triggering an in-product customer satisfaction survey as well as reaching out via email to schedule customer feedback calls.


Are there limits to how many events I can send?
There is currently no event limit for UGS Analytics.

Are there any size limitations on my event parameters?
We recommend avoiding sending events with large parameters values (greater than 100 characters) as these will be slower to analyze later. The overall size of each event is limited to 1MB. This includes the entire JSON serialization of the event.


What versions of Unity are supported?
The minimum Unity Editor version required for UGS Analytics is Unity 2019.4.


Where are my events, some are missing?
The first place to look for missing events is the Event Browser. This is the first place events will flow prior to the Dashboards & Data Explorer. Verify that the events are valid. Invalid events will be shown by clicking on the Invalid Events tab which displays an invalid reason. More information can be found here.


My Events are failing with the reason that duplicate events are detected.
Duplicate Events can appear within the Event Browser; this is likely when the events are sent over the SDK which doesn’t log them as received so will send them again. All the events have a unique eventID so any duplicates will be immediately rejected by the platform.


What happens to Events collected during offline play?
Events recorded during offline play are cached locally on the client device and sent when connectivity is restored.


Can I see what Events are being sent?
The sent Events can be seen within 5 - 15 minutes of being sent in the Event Browser or by enabling logging in the console. More information can be found here.


Why are there differences in my KPIs?
KPIs & metrics are calculated differently from Legacy Unity Analytics. Check out the KPI and metric explanations available in the Dashboards and metric dropdown in Data Explorer by hovering over the info and question mark icons provided.


How long does it take before my data shows in the dashboard?
After the SDK installation it can take a minimum of one hour for the metrics to be processed for analysis in the Dashboards and Data Explorer. To confirm your integration has been successful, use the Event Browser to view your event stream. More information about the Event Browser can be found here.


What KPIs can I track?
A full list of metrics can be found on the Data Explorer feature for tracking against your game KPIs. The list is limited to the ones predefined with no ability to create custom metrics.



Events

Can I track player attribution?
You can track the data provided by MMPs on the client side such as (but not limited to): the ad network, the specific ad which brought the user to your game, and the cost to acquire this user. All of this data can be recorded in our standard event: acquisitionSource. Find out how here.…


Can I track revenue?
Yes, IAP revenue can be tracked in UGS Analytics but Ad revenue isn’t yet available. When using Unity IAP, transactions will automatically be recorded in UGS Analytics or you can manually record transactions, documentation can be found here.



Privacy

Is UGS Analytics COPPA compliant?
In order to provide analytics for your games, UGS Analytics generates an anonymized user ID for each user in your game. We do not use any of these IDs generated from Child Apps to track users across apps built by other developers or to map users between different services, devices, or browsers on the same computer. In addition to these IDs, UGS Analytics also collects the following personal information from Child App users: IP address, identifiers for advertisers (IDFA is only collected if Unity Ads is also enabled) and device identifiers (IDFV, Android device ID or IMEI if Android device ID is unavailable).


If your application is a Child App, you need to designate it as such within the Editor service panel or via the Project creation process in the Unity Dashboard.


Is UGS Analytics GDPR compliant?
Maintaining compliance with GDPR when you use UGS Analytics is a shared responsibility. Unity provides the tools to allow a player to opt out of the PII collection, and to manage the personal data that Unity collects about them, as required by the GDPR. More information about managing data privacy can be found here.



Data
Can I send Events from non-Unity apps?
The UGS Analytics package and the REST API are the only methods of sending data that are currently supported.


Can I send Events from a server?
Yes, Events can be sent to the UGS Analytics REST API.


Can I send data I exported from another service?
You can’t send data directly from another service, but you can send data to the UGS Analytics REST API if you have exported it and transformed it to match the analytics event definitions in your project.


Can I backfill old data?
No, events with an eventTimestamp older than 31 days ago will be dropped automatically.


Can I export my data?
Reports that are created within the dashboard can be exported to PNG or CSV. Alternatively, if you would like to export raw data you can make use of the Data Access feature to again access your organization data through Snowflake.


Can I disable UGS Analytics?
Yes, UGS Analytics can be enabled and disabled from the UGS Analytics Settings page on the Unity Dashboard. Disabling this setting prevents further data from being recorded. It can be re-enabled again at a later date to resume data recording.


Can I delete my data?
Yes, use Game Data Deletion to delete your data per environment.


Can I delete a player’s data?
There is a GDPR function built into the SDK that can be used to delete all the data for a given player.

It records a ddnaForgetMe event that results in all the data for the player being deleted within the next 30 days. This event can also be submitted through the UGS Analytics REST API.
Note, if new data is received for the player it’ll be recorded. See the GDPR documentation for more information.


Can I block a player?
No, it’s not possible to block individual players.


Where are the servers hosted?
Our servers are in Belgium and we use Snowflake instances in the Netherlands to store data plus a replicated copy in Iowa.