Photon News July ’16 – New Photon Cloud Regions, Pricing Comparision, Exploding Kittens

by Robert · July 22, 2016

Dear Photon Developer,

On our mission to make multiplayer simple, we added additional regions to our
Photon Cloud and explain why we think that our CCU based pricing is part of that mission.

Read on, be aware of Exploding Kittens or meet and discuss with us at Casual
Connect USA next week…

New Photon Cloud Regions for Everyone

Ping! We once decided to offer all Photon Cloud regions for the same price and
as a result it took us way longer than expected to find a hosting partner for South
America that fits to our requirements. Gladly we worked out a solution together
with our preferred partner IBM Softlayer and ramped up servers in São Paulo,
Brasil, to setup a new Photon Cloud region ‘South America’.
Travelling the US coast to coast and up north to Canada is not only a huge
distance for sight-seeing tourists, but also for data packets sent around by
Photon powered games. So we setup a second US region therefore, US West,
served via our new hosting center in San José, California and region ‘Canada
East’ which is hosted in Montreal.
Find all three regions now available in all Photon plans at no additional costs.

Learn more about Photon Cloud regions >>

Photon Cloud Hosting Center in China Mainland for
Selected Customers

We have many customers who want to publish their games in China, but so far
they needed to use Photon Server and find a Chinese company for hosting. Not
really the easiest way to enter the Chinese market, but at least an option.
Now we are taking the next step with the support of a Chinese partner who helps
us ramping up servers in the Guang Dong area to host Photon Cloud apps for our
Enterprise clients and selected customers.
If you have a bigger Photon Cloud project you want to launch in China and expect
3,000+ concurrent users, please click the link below and email us.

I need hosting in China Mainland >>

Why We are Convinced that Our Pricing is the Fairest

We are often being asked why our subscription plans for Photon Cloud products
(Realtime, PUN, Chat, Voice) are based on concurrent users (=CCU) and our
answer is always the same: because we strongly believe that it is the most
transparent and fairest model for our customers.
Read in our blog, why we think so and how Amazon’s GameLift or Unity
Multiplayer compare.

Read about Photon’s pricing >>

Exploding Kittens –
The Most-backed Kickstarter Project ofAll Times

Exploding Kittens became famous as the most-backed game in Kickstarter
history and the campaign with the highest number of backers. It is a highly-
strategic, kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette presented as a card game.
Players draw cards and when someone draws an Exploding Kitten, well, they
explode and are dead – unless that player can defuse the kitten using a defuse
card featuring things like laser pointers, belly rubs, and catnip sandwiches.
The game app was developed by Substantial for iOS and Android and instantly
climbed the #1 in the iOS paid apps charts. It features local and Photon powered
online multiplayer for up-to 5 players.

Check out Exploding Kittens >>