Forum QuickConnect Linking accounts

Discussion and help relating to PlayerIO's QuickConnect feature, including Facebook Connect and Kongregate Connect.

Linking accounts

Postby goldbug » December 22nd, 2016, 8:34 pm

Most users have multiple accounts. For example someone might have a facebook account, a steam account and have an android phone.

It would be great if a person was playing my game on facebook, close the computer opened the phone and keep playing with the same character right where he left of.

This means the same account could have several authentication methods, or something like that. Has anyone implemented this kind of integration?
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Re: Linking accounts

Postby robscherer123 » December 22nd, 2016, 9:29 pm

On my game, the user has to log in through one or the other, they're not linked like you've mentioned.

It seems to be this would potentially be possible, although you'd probably have to create a process for the user to link the accounts themselves and authenticate them. It would probably be a bit of a pain to implement with whatever current system you have set up. For example we'll call the system you have now "auth login", where they login either through facebook, as a simple user, kongregate, android, steam, etc. Then have something we'll call "grand account", which is a db object holding all logins keys for that user. A bit vague, but I think it would be possible, it could just get a bit ugly.

I know I've had users ask me if they can transfer their login from one source to another, and I just tell them no. I know it's unfortunate for them, but it doesn't seem to be something of big importance to my game personally. Nonetheless I think it would be possible, unless I'm forgetting something that would prevent this.
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Re: Linking accounts

Postby goldbug » December 24th, 2016, 6:27 pm

Yeah, thanks.

I was thinking that the accounts would just have the id of the character and there would be a separate character table. Thus if a facebook account and a steam account have the same character id, then they are the same character.

I guess what I would do is that if you play in fb and steam, there would be a button to "link accounts", which would dump one of the existing characters.

It would be great if this kind of user story was supported natively by PlayerIO. I would think many games would want this kind of functionality, as you have seen requests from your users.
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Re: Linking accounts

Postby Henrik » December 27th, 2016, 8:31 pm

Hey goldbug,

No, this functionality isn't currently supported by PlayerIO, and yes, there are several developers who have asked about it. Due to ancient design decisions, this change is pretty difficult to do, so we've shelved it for now. We might get to it in the future, but it's not planned right now.
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Re: Linking accounts

Postby alandyshev » January 26th, 2017, 2:09 pm

Henrik,
I'm looking for Linking Accounts feature to be implemented asap as well. Is there any roadmap or feature list where I can vote for feature? I would vote for Linking Accounts :)
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Re: Linking accounts

Postby BadViking » May 23rd, 2017, 1:36 pm

For what it's worth we would also be interested in this feature.
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Re: Linking accounts

Postby Emalton » June 14th, 2017, 12:19 am

I'm not sure how Everybody Edits does it, but they do it.

https://forums.everybodyedits.com/viewt ... p?id=39326
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Re: Linking accounts

Postby Henrik » June 15th, 2017, 2:34 am

You can do it yourself, something like this:

Everyone's actual account is through a Basic connection. When someone authenticates using Facebook or Steam or whatever, you check the PlayerObject for the "real" account name, then you securely generate the auth hash for that account name, and re-authenticate through the Basic connection. Then you use that, and only that connection for BigDB, Multiplayer, etc. Payvault purchases will be tied to the connection associated with the external service, so you would have to securely transfer virtual goods from one to the real account.

To connect a second authentication method, show the real account name to the user, and have them enter that after authenticating through the other account, and store that in that PlayerObject. Repeat for each authentication method the user has.

The real problem is that presenting this to the user in a sane way is actually pretty difficult. And it means that if you get a blank user through an authentication method, should you ask the user if they have an account already, or should you just create a new real account and let the user gather progress in the game?

So it's messy, and you need to look at your game and figure out to best way to present it to the users, but it's totally doable.
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