Scoreloop, one of the popular leaderboard service provider for games announced termination of its services and will shutdown permanently on Dec 1, 2014. Developers who had Scoreloop SDK integrated with their apps and games are required to find an alternative before that date.
Scoreloop supported a wide veriety of platforms including Window Phone and Blackberry and offered its services to developers for free, which were the reasons for its popularity among game developers. In 2011, Scoreloop was acquired by Blackberry and unfortunately they have decided to shut it down now.
Online leaderboards in games is one of the primary requirements nowadays for game development. In this post we bring you 8 alternatives to Scoreloop to help you in your hunt to find the best Leaderboard service providers. Most of the services mentioned here are more than just Leaderboard service providers and are capable of providing a complete backend including analytics, storage, social and push notifications. Let’s have a look at them:
1. Parse
Parse attempts to be a complete mobile app platform by providing almost all kinds of backend services needed by an app such as Cloud data and File storage, Social Logins, Analytics, Push Notifications and much more.
Parse SDK is available for almost every platform out there, including iOS, OSX, Android, Windows, Windows Phone, Unity, PHP, Javascript and many many more. REST API documentation is also avilable.
Parse has a generous FREE package which gives 20 GB of free storage, additional 20 GB for database storage, 2TB data transfer and 1 million push notifications per month per app. The only limitation being on maximum concurrent users. Check Parse Pricing for more details.
2. Google Play Game Services
Google Play Game services provide achievements, leaderboards, multiplayer support, and other exciting game features for your mobile and web games.
Google Play Game services has SDK for Android, iOS and C++ alongwith REST API documentation.
Google Play Game services are completely free, however Quota and Rate Limiting are applied which can be requested to be increased. Head over to Google Play Game services for more info.
3. Microsoft Azure Mobile Services
Microsoft Azure Mobile services provides cloud backend for your apps with features like single sign-on with Active Directory, Facebook, Twitter and Google, Push Notifications, Online Data Storage and much more.
Azure Mobile services support variety of platforms including iOS, Android, Windows, Windows Phone and Web.
Azure Mobile services FREE package gives you upto 500K API calls, 500 active devices and 20MB database storage. Please refer to Azure Mobile services pricing for further details.
Bonus: If you are building Leaderboard using Azure mobile service then the following tutorial will help: Using Azure Mobile Services to Create a Game Leaderboard in Minutes
4. Scoreoid
Scoreoid is a pure gaming backend service covering everything from leaderboards, cloud storage to player management.
Scoreoid doesn’t provide SDK for any platforms. Instead it provides REST API support for all major programming languages and platforms to provide a solution that is cross platform and agnostic to development environments.
Scoreoid’s free plan is quite limited with support of just 1 game and upto 1000 Monthly active users. Learn more about Scoreoid’s pricing plan.
5. OpenKit
OpenKit is a open source backend for game developers. It provides Social Leaderboards, Push Notifications, Achievements, Smart Invites and more for games.
OpenKit’s platform support is limited to iOS and Android, however a Unity plugin is also provided.
In OpenKit’s free plan, upto 150K monthly active users are supported. For full details of pricing, please refer to OpenKit’s pricing page.
6. App42 Cloud API Services
App42 Cloud API Services provide an extensive backend for apps and games with more than 500+ APIs for Gaming, Storage, Social and Engagement. Its Gaming backend APIs support User Management, Analytics, Push Notifications, File Storage, Social Integration, Achievements, Leaderboards, Reward system. Buddy management and Avatar management.
App42 Cloud API Services has native SDKs available for as many as 18 different platforms including iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry and many more.
App42 Cloud API Services provide a free plan for Indie apps and games which gives utpo 1 million API calls, 1 million push notifications, 1GB bandwidth and 1GB storage per month for free. Refer to App42’s pricing page for full pricing details.
7. Clay.io
Clay.io is a backend service exclusive for HTML5 games and provides features like Leaderboards, Achievements, In-Game Payments, Data Storage, Analytics and much more.
Since Clay.io is specific to HTML5 games, it provides only a Javascript SDK. Clay.io provides a marketplace too for Game developers for them to market their games.
Clay.io is completely free to use for HTML5 games. Any purchases of your game that take place in the Clay.io store, and any in-game purchases using the Clay.io payment processing API will have 20% cut taken from it.
8. Buddy
Buddy provides a REST based API service for a variety of backend operations which include: User Account management, Push Notifications, Messaging, Game Scores, Metadata, Boards and much more.
Buddy offers SDKs for several platforms including iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Windows and Javascript. Documented REST API is also available for direct and customized access of Buddy Services.
Buddy has a pretty generous FREE package which allows Unlimited API calls and upto 10 GB of storage per app. Check Buddy’s Homepage for more details.
Your turn
We would like to know which backend services do you use for your apps and games. Were you using Scoreloop leaderboard service and are now considering moving to a different backend service? Share your feedback and experiences about leaderboard service providers and backend services in the comments below. Also don’t forget to share this post with your fellow developers.
Can you please explain on what basis these providers are ranked. Parse and MS Azure does not have leaderboard services and looks strange to have them in top order.
Hi Ajay! These services are not ranked at all and are placed at random. As already explained in the post, Parse and MS Azure are more versatile backend and a developer can easily utilize them as Leaderboard service providers along with other things. These two services are highly recommended if you are looking to go beyond just a leaderboard (e.g. push notifications, backend game data storage etc.). Moreover these services are from leading companies and are very rare to go extinct anytime soon like Scoreloop. :) Do make sure to see the tutorial link I gave for implementing a leaderboard service with MS Azure.
What about the Firebase?
Personally, I really like Firebase and it’s free plan is also quite good for starters. However, Firebase is more suitable for a real time data sync application, for e.g. a real time chat app or a multiplayer game. Using Firebase for just leaderboard service might be a slight overkill given that it is capable of much more than that. I would certainly recommend firebase to any game developer who wants to add capabilities like real time chat, multi-player matchmaking, real-time multiplayer gameplay etc. to his game, in which case Firebase can also serve to store the leaderboard and user profiles.
Try https://www.leaderboards.io. It has top 100 scores for several timframes, social leaderboards, rank, and more. It also has player data storage.
This article needs another update…
Parse has folded (although you can grab their source code and run it on your own server) and OpenKit appears to have vanished — current site is just a WordPress blog.
Jay
Also, Scoreoid is gone, and both Clay.io and Buddy seem to have “pivoted” — the former is still games-based but is a distributor and doesn’t seem to offer those tools anymore, while the latter is focused on “Internet of Things” stuff and doesn’t even mention games,
Microsoft Azure, Google Play, and App42 all seem to still be in the “game back end” business.
Jay
GameSparks has the best leaderboards on the planet and are used by many of the biggest publishers.
Try out Gaming Backend solution by Blazesoft.
It it’s A-Z backend platform that already includes all features you will need in your game –
1. XP Management
2. Levels Management
3. Integration to Stores and packages configuration
4. Leaderboard
5. Gifts sending / receiving
6. Rate Us mechanisms
7. Player’s 360 view
8. Various reports – Retention, Leads , Acquisition and more
For slots games there are unique offering – server side %RTP Calculation, PAR Sheets, Slot Machines setup and more
For sports betting games – full integration with BetRadar / Sport Radar and social sportsbook management.
And this is just in the nutshell :)
http://www.blazesoft.ca
Since Google Play games services for iOS is deprecated and is not likely to function as expected is there any other best solution to overcome this?
Or what is the best service for a game built in unity for iOS??
Hello Sam, I am not aware of any direct replacement of Google Play games services. Google has mentioned that they will continue supporting features such as Sign-in, Achievements, Leaderboards and Multiplayer. Unity also has it’s own set of offerings now and can be found at https://unity3d.com/services
I can also recommend V-Play Engine. It’s an easy-to-use development tool with many ready-made services to e.g. add leaderboards or a chat with push notifications.
For more information, please see here:
https://v-play.net/cross-platform-app-development/how-to-add-chat-service-and-cross-platform-leaderboard-with-user-profiles-to-your-ios-or-android-app
Please have a look at https://www.4players.io/4players-scill-engagement-toolkit/ .
It has leaderboards, challenges and battlepasses. It’s all event driven and offers a trial subscription for cloud-based services ready to use.