Set up your first virtual currency

Important

Economy v2 is now Generally Available. For support and feedback, go to the PlayFab Forum.

Get started with PlayFab Economy by using the PlayFab Services SDK to set up your first virtual currency. After getting an entity token to interact with your title via the APIs, you create and configure a virtual currency.

Prerequisites

• A PlayFab developer account
• The PlayFab Beta SDK (You can find more information on the Postman Quickstart)

Get a title entity token

To make changes to your title config data via the APIs, you first need to obtain a title entity token. You can find more information on the Postman Quickstart

Create a new virtual currency

To create a new virtual currency, you need to create a Draft Item of type Currency.

Game Manager

1. Navigate to the Economy tab in Game Manager and select Catalog (V2).
2. Choose Currency and select New currency.
3. Edit the Title and add a Description - for example, Diamonds, Our in-game currency of choice..
4. Select Save and publish to complete your changes.
5. Observe your currency in the Currency list.

REST API

Call CreateDraftItem. Use the following body:

JSON

{
  "Item": {
    "CreatorEntity": {
      "Id": "{{TitleID}}",
      "Type": "title"
    },
    "Type": "currency",
    "AlternateIds": [
      {
        "Type": "FriendlyId",
        "Value": "diamonds"
      }
    ],
    "Title": {
      "NEUTRAL": "Diamonds"
    },
    "Description": {
      "NEUTRAL": "Our in-game currency of choice."
    },
    "StartDate": "2023-07-27T00:00:00.000Z",
  },
  "Publish": true,
  "CustomTags": {
    "user": "{{Email}}"
  }
}

• The FriendlyId is the currency code, which can contain between one and three alphanumeric values
• The Title is the display name that is shown to the players
• ContentType is a categorization of Economy items. You must first set the Content Type in ⚙️ > Title Settings > Economy > Catalog (V2) Settings.
• StartDate is a datetime string representing when the currency is visible to the players (default is the time of creation)

Troubleshooting

• Missing/expired entity token
  • If you're attempting to call CreateDraftItem and receive a 401: Unauthorized error, you may have forgotten to get a title entity token, or it might be expired
• The content type '' isn't supported
  • If you're attempting to call CreateDraftItem and receive a CatalogBadRequest with the above message, you need to first create a content type in the catalog settings tab under your title's settings page in Game Manager

Next steps

Now that you set up your first virtual currency, you can:

1. Add the currency to PlayFab Bundles you sell in app stores.
2. Have the game server reward the currency to your players with AddInventoryItems.
3. Assign prices to Catalog Items corresponding to the currency.
4. Allow players to purchase Catalog Items with the currency using PurchaseInventoryItems.