Submitting Games to App Stores

Over the course of this book, we have gone over many aspects of building games for mobile devices. The last step in our game development journey is actually releasing the game out into the wild and having people actually play it. All of those long hours of hard work have now come together into something that the masses will be able to enjoy.

When doing this, there are a number of things to keep in mind, and this is exactly what we will be discussing next.

In this chapter, we will go over the process of submitting your game to the Google Play Store or iOS App Store, with tips and tricks to help the process go smoother. By the end of this chapter, you will know exactly how to create developer accounts for both stores, as well as how to submit your game to the respective stores.

This chapter will be split into a number of topics. It will contain a simple step-by-step process from beginning to end. Here is the outline of our tasks:

• Putting...

Technical requirements

This book utilizes Unity 2022.1.0b16 and Unity Hub 3.3.1, but the steps should work with minimal changes in future versions of the editor. If you want to download the exact version used in this book, and there is a new version out, you can visit Unity’s download archive at https://unity3d.com/get-unity/download/archive. You can also find the system requirements for Unity at https://docs.unity3d.com/2022.1/Documentation/Manual/system-requirements.html in the Unity Editor system requirements section. To deploy your project, you will need an Android or iOS device.

You can find the code files present in this chapter on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Unity-2022-Mobile-Game-Development-3rd-Edition/tree/main/Chapter13%20and%2014.

Putting your game on the Google Play Store

Now that your game is built, you will need to actually put it up on Google’s Play Store. To put games up on the Google Play Store, you are required to pay a one-time $25 dollar fee. This may or may not seem like a large amount of money, but it is much cheaper than the iOS App Store and is a one-time fee, so for those who are a bit more budget-conscious, you may wish to dive into Google first and make some profit before moving on to Apple’s store. We will first look at the Google Play Console before filling out all of the details needed in order to submit our game to the store. We will also discuss how to mark our game as a beta version to get feedback from others before making the final submission.

Setting up the Google Play Console

The first step is to gain access to the Google Play Console. This allows you to publish an Android app on Google Play as well as Google Play Game Services if want. Implement the following steps...

Publishing an app on Google Play

The process of publishing an app to Google Play involves filling out a number of different fields with information about your game, as well as art assets for screenshots. To do this, implement the following steps:

1. From the All apps page, click on the Create app button.

Figure 14.5 – The All apps page

2. You’ll be brought to a page where you need to select the app name and default language of your game. You’ll then need to select whether it’s an app or a game. We’ll choose Game.

Figure 14.6 – The Create app menu

3. Scroll down, and you’ll see three declarations that you’ll need to read through and check whether they’re relevant, and then, click on the Create app button:

Figure 14.7 – The app dashboard

The dashboard page shows details of all of the latest steps that are...

Putting your game on the Apple iOS App Store

Just like the Google Play store, there is an additional fee to put your game on the App Store. Unlike the Google Play store, the fee is $99 plus tax every year. However, a lot of people believe that having their titles on iOS devices is worth the extra cost. In this section, we will go through the process of getting our game on the App Store. We will start by setting up your Apple Developer account and creating a provisioning profile. Afterward, we’ll utilize the iTunes Connect tool to actually add the app to the store and utilize Xcode to make an archive, with which we can upload the project to the App Store so that it can finally be reviewed for submission.

Apple Developer setup and creating a provisioning profile

In order to deploy an app onto an iOS device, you are required to use a Mac computer, but before we move on to the iTunes store, we first need to have all of the certificates and permissions figured out in advance...

Summary

In this chapter, you learned how to publish your games on both Google Play and the Apple iOS App Store. You learned how to put the game on Google Play by setting up the Google Play Console and, finally, how to publish your app on the store. You then learned how to put a copy of the iOS version of your game on the App Store and all of the setup involved therein.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this exploration of features and that you continue to explore the possibilities of this area. In the next chapter, we will discover one of the newest additions to mobile game development – augmented reality.