Set up external identity providers
Unity Authentication provides support for a wide range of identity providers, allowing players to choose their preferred sign-in options to access your game and recover their account and progress.
Platform-specific authentication, also known as third-party authentication or external authentication, utilizes external identity providers such Apple, Facebook, Steam. This requires the creation of an identity provider configuration that Unity Authentication can use to validate the player, making it possible to authenticate the same player from multiple devices and allows returning players to recover their game progress.
The process typically starts with a player signing in through an external identity provider using their existing credentials. When a player signs in, a token is sent to Unity Authentication for validation. If the token is validated successfully by the external identity provider, it is then associated with the Unity Authentication PlayerID.
There are two potential scenarios:
- If the player signs in with a platform credential, the SignInWith* APIs should be called to authenticate an existing user, if the user doesn’t exist, a new user will be created.
- If the player has signed in anonymously and is looking to link their external account, LinkWith* APIs should be called to associate the player to an external account.
Note: While you can implement more than one platform sign-in in your game from different platforms, you can only have one sign-in per platform. For example, if you have a Facebook account and a Google Play Games account, you're able to link the same Player ID with both accounts. However, if you have two different Facebook accounts, you can only link your Player ID with one of these Facebook accounts.
See the guides for these supported external identity providers: