Photon Engine (Germany, Exit Games) is the most-used real-time multiplayer infrastructure among independent studios: instead of running servers, the game uses SDKs (Fusion, Quantum, Realtime, PUN) that connect players to Photon’s managed cloud across global regions.
What it does
- Add real-time multiplayer to Unity, Unreal and other games
- Sync matches with rooms, lobbies and automatic matching
- Run deterministic logic (Quantum) or state transfer (Fusion/PUN)
- Scale without operating your own game servers
Products
Fusion (state-sync netcode for Unity), Quantum (deterministic, for sports/fighting/ECS), Realtime (generic rooms), PUN (the Unity classic), plus Chat and Voice. The cloud has global regions and pricing by concurrent users (CCU) or a subscription with included CCU.
Public pricing
- Free development plan (published CCU limit)
- Subscription plans by CCU (100/500/…) published on the plans page
- Enterprise/dedicated via contact
Strengths
- The shortest path to working multiplayer in Unity
- Mature infrastructure with years of production on million-player games
- Global low-latency regions and a usage dashboard
Points of attention
- CCU costs rise fast at launch
- Authority/anti-cheat logic requires your own design
- Service coupling: migrating netcode later is expensive