Player or Automation Service

To provide game developers with an extensive toolset of options, our platform consists of two main services that create different accounts.

• Player Service

  A self-custodial service to implement Beam directly into your game with our platform SDKs. Accounts made with this API are owned by your players, meaning no action can be performed without users approval. This is facilitated by signing transactions and Sessions. It is the recommended approach for most games.

• Automation Service

  A custodial service to implement distribution/automation in your backend services. This is ideally used for your game server or other backend services that require automated actions. You are the custodian of all the assets owned by these accounts.

Would you like to start right away? Jump ahead to our SDKs for the Unity and Unreal game engines. They utilize the self-custodial Player approach.

Player Service

If you’re looking to implement your game onto the Beam Network, we highly recommend you get started with our Player Service. We offer multiple solutions to help you use our self-custodial Player API on both the server and client sides. Since the user controls the private key that owns the account we deploy, there is no doubt about who owns the asset—the gamer.

• Implementation: How to get started.
• Operations: An introduction to Operations.
• Sessions: An introduction to Sessions.
• Transactions: Understand how to run sponsored, self-paid, and custom charge transactions.
• Assets: Simplify in-game asset management.
• Marketplace: List, buy, and make offers on other people’s assets.
• Exchange: Convert tokens based on configured liquidity pools.

Automation Service

While the Player Service offers everything needed to get you going, you might be interested in a programmatic solution for various back-end purposes. For example, if you’re looking to create a programmatic minter that you can control through one of our clients, the Automation API is the one you’re looking for.

Automation Profiles are smart contract accounts that game developers can use to manage their own crypto assets in connection with their games. They’re helpful for automating certain tasks - such as sending rewards to players, without needing to do everything manually. The Automation Profiles may only be used for the game developer’s own assets and cannot be used to store or manage crypto assets that belong to others.

• Profiles: Understanding Automation API wallets.
• Policies: Understand and create policies.
• Trading: Trade assets and tokens between two profiles securely.

Misc

Profiles between Automation and Player APIs are not interchangeable. If you want to transfer assets from one to another, you can do so, using their respective Account (Wallet) Addresses. Profiles are free to create, and you can make as many as you need. Keep in mind that actual Account Abstraction is deployed on the blockchain on first transaction performed by that account. Because of this, the first transaction might be a bit slower than any subsequent action.