AWS for Games Blog

AWS Announces AWS GameKit for Unreal Engine

We are excited to announce AWS GameKit, a new solution that allows game developers to deploy and customize game backend features directly from Unreal Engine. AWS GameKit comes with AWS CloudFormation templates for each feature that follows AWS Solution Architect designs. AWS GameKit also comes with an integration code between the game backend features and Unreal Engine. Today, we are launching four game backend features on AWS GameKit to support PC games built on Unreal Engine 4. Starting now, game developers can download AWS GameKit directly from the AWS GameKit website and discover resources in the Unreal Engine Marketplace to gain access to the plugin, as well as libraries, samples, and documentation. With the AWS GameKit plugin, you can build AWS-powered game features directly from Unreal with just a few clicks.

Players increasingly expect to see robust online functionality in their games, especially features that deliver improved device portability and performance. Games of all types use these features to boost player engagement and retention. Until now, game developers who wanted to offer online features had to manually build and host their own backend services or use managed services that offer limited customization options.

AWS GameKit is a one-stop destination for discovering source code, libraries, sample AWS CloudFormation templates, and documentation for building various well architected secure backend game features using relevant AWS services right from the game engine. For each game feature, AWS GameKit provides ready-to-go solution that follow the AWS “well-architected” framework to deliver secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure for your game.  AWS GameKit uses the AWS CloudFormation templates to provision and connect all the necessary AWS resources together into a cohesive solution to power these features. These AWS resources run in the developer’s own AWS account. This means that you control all aspects of your game backend—you can get started fast with the GameKit basic solutions, and then customize and build out your services to meet the needs of your game.

AWS GameKit makes it easy to build game features without requiring prior experience with core AWS services. Deploy an AWS connected game backend feature in four easy steps:

  1. Download and install AWS GameKit plugin in Unreal Engine.
  2. Create an AWS GameKit project to uniquely identify your game.
  3. Provide your AWS credentials.
  4. Click the create button to provision the cloud services to power the game backend feature.

With the game backend in place, you can add the feature functionality to your code by calling the AWS GameKit API. For Unreal Engine, you can work either in Blueprints or in the C++ code and can refer to samples that have been provided to illustrate the game feature functionality. AWS GameKit provides access to the source code so that you can customize a feature at will and gain more visibility into the feature works.

AWS GameKit launch features: 

The AWS GameKit plugin lets you configure and deploy a game feature from your Unreal Engine game project. AWS GameKit offers a suite of core game backend features at launch, including:

  • Identity and Authentication: Create unique identities for each player and allow players to sign into your game. Verify player identities and manage player sessions.
  • Achievements: Track and display game-related rewards earned by players.
  • Game State Cloud Saving: Maintain a synchronized copy of player game progress in the cloud to allow players to resume gameplay across sessions.
  • User Gameplay Data: Maintain game-related data for each player, such as inventory, statistics, cross-play persistence, etc.

AWS GameKit Resources:

  • Documentation and getting started guide on how to build backend services and add feature functionality to your game.
  • API library to add game feature functionality and connect to your custom backend services deployed on AWS.
  • Example Unreal Blueprints and C++ code that illustrate feature integration and let you experiment with functionality.

Keep an eye out for our future releases to support mobile and console games, as well as the launch of the AWS GameKit plugin for Unity. Learn more and download AWS GameKit from the AWS GameKit website or our GitHub Repository.