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In-App Purchasing

Introduction to webshops

Understand studios, projects, slugs, environments, and the draft-to-live publish model that a webshop uses.
Read time 4 minutesLast updated 6 hours ago
A webshop sells the In-App Purchasing (IAP) catalog from a single Unity Cloud project. The webshop uses that project's IAP products, payment providers, environments, and access controls. A studio and slug together form the webshop's public URL. Each webshop belongs to one Unity Cloud project, and its configuration is partitioned by environment. Only the production environment can publish. When you publish, Unity copies the production draft to a live snapshot served through a content delivery network.

Studios

A studio is the URL handle that identifies your organization in every webshop URL. For example, in 
shop.unity.com/acme/game/dungeon-adventure
, the studio is 
acme
. Studios have the following properties:
  • A studio name belongs to a single Unity organization and applies to every webshop in that organization. Other organizations can't claim the name unless the current owner renames or deletes it. If a studio name is unavailable and you hold a registered trademark for it, contact 
    trademarks@unity3d.com
    to request its release.
  • You set the studio name when anyone in your organization creates the first webshop. For later webshops, the studio field is visible but read-only.
  • You can rename the studio in Organization settings, in the Studio name field. The new name must pass the same uniqueness check as the original name.
  • Renaming the studio changes the URL of every webshop in your organization. This breaks any external link, deep link, QR code, or marketing asset that points to the old URL. Update those references before or immediately after you rename the studio.
  • Deleting your organization's last webshop releases the studio name back to the global pool, where another organization can claim it.
Choose a studio name that reflects your company. The studio name is publicly visible in every webshop URL you create.
Warning
Deleting your last webshop releases your studio name. If you might create another webshop later and want to keep the same URL prefix, unpublish instead of deleting it. Alternatively, keep a placeholder webshop in a low-traffic project to keep the studio name claimed.

Unity Cloud projects

Each webshop belongs to exactly one Unity Cloud project, and each project can have only one webshop. The project provides the IAP catalog, payment provider configuration, and admin access permissions. To create separate webshops for separate games, create a separate project for each game.

Slugs

A slug is the project-specific identifier in the shop URL and is often your game's name. For example, in 
shop.unity.com/acme/game/dungeon-adventure
, the slug is 
dungeon-adventure
. A slug must meet these requirements:
  • Be 3 to 64 characters long.
  • Use only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens.
  • Start and end with a lowercase letter or number.
Slugs are unique within a studio. To change a slug, go to the webshop's Edit view and update the Shop URL field. When you publish a slug change, any URL that uses the old slug returns a 404. Ensure that you update your game's deep link to the new URL before you publish the change.

Environments

A webshop's configuration is partitioned by Unity Environment. Each webshop can have up to 25 environments, including the production environment. The production environment is the only one that can publish. Its live configuration is what players see at the public URL. All other environments are draft-only workspaces for development and testing. Use non-production environments to experiment with themes, branding, payment provider routing and preview catalog updates before they reach players. To copy a non-production environment's theme and branding into the production draft, use the Apply to production action in the Customize theme section. This promotion doesn't publish the changes. You must still publish the production draft before the changes go live. For instructions, refer to Apply a non-production draft to production.
You can preview a non-production environment from the Edit view, under General, using the Dev preview URL. This token-protected, preauthenticated link renders the environment's current draft and doesn't require the reviewer to sign in. The token expires after 72 hours, so generate a new link for each review cycle.

Draft and live configurations

Every environment has a draft configuration. The draft includes the editable theme, branding references, hero banner, deep link target, and mock catalog setting that you change in the Dashboard. Each Dev preview URL renders the current draft. When you publish the production environment, Unity copies the production draft to the live configuration that players see at the public URL. The draft remains editable, so later changes don't affect the live webshop until you publish again. To compare the draft and live configurations, use the Current draft and Live webshop toggle in the Dashboard's Preview pane. The Preview pane also includes a currency switcher for previewing prices by region.

Publishing and content delivery

When you publish, Unity creates an HTML shell that contains your theme, branding, and shop metadata. Unity then serves the shell to players through a content delivery network. Product cards aren't part of the shell. The webshop fetches product cards from the IAP catalog each time a player loads the page.
This separation between the shell and the catalog has the following effects:
  • Theme and branding changes are part of the shell, so players see them only after you publish.
  • Catalog changes don't require publishing. Updates you make in Create a catalog in the Editor are visible to players the next time they load the page.
For instructions on publishing and unpublishing a webshop, refer to Publish a webshop.