Android game developers with gaming apps on Google Play will find it easier to test games with a newly expanded suite of Management APIs to facilitate game development and testing, with better support for alpha and beta groups.
The Google Play Management API is a set of tools that enable developers to do things like manage tester data and clean up bad leaderboard score submissions. Developers can also use the API to control and manipulate resources such as achievements, events, multiplayer match data.
The expanded offerings includes:
- Reset a single tester’s state for any resource such as achievements and leaderboards, or do it for all resources at once. For example, developers can now completely reset a given tester’s data if they’ve ended up in a bad state due to an experimental build. This can be done for individual instances or all instances of achievements, events, quests, or leaderboards scores.
- Reset the state of a single draft resource for all testers, or do it for all draft resources at once. Developers can now reset all draft leaderboards in a game before publishing with a single API call. This ensures the members of alpha or beta communities don’t have an unfair advantage on release day. This can be done for individual instances or all instances of achievements, events, quests, or leaderboards scores.
- Clear global match state for all real time or turn based matches composed solely of testers, allowing for the ability to reset all turn-based matches on release day. This will ensure that all matches from that point on are on the release version of the game. This is available for both real-time or turn-based games.