Learn the terminology and key concepts used in the Unity Lobby documentation.
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UGS
Unity Gaming Services. The term used to refer to Unity services.
Host
A player who creates the lobby or assumes the role of host from another host.
Inactive lobby
Lobbies are marked as inactive if they haven’t been updated or sent a heartbeat request in the last 30 seconds. An inactive lobby can be reactivated by being updated or sending a heartbeat request. Inactive public lobbies do not appear in query results. A public or private lobby that has been inactive for more than one hour may be deleted at any time.
Lobby
The Multiplayer Services SDK uses lobbies as the underlying backend to store session data. When you create a session you also create a lobby.
Lobby data
Data specific to the lobby.
Lobby ID
Used when working directly with the Lobby SDK.A randomly generated ID, or a string set with
CreateOrJoinLobbyAsync
, assigned to a lobby when it's created to uniquely identify it. When joining a public lobby, the lobby ID is used to identify the lobby to join.
Member data
Data that's only visible to players who have joined the lobby.
Player
A player within the lobby.
Player data
Data specific to the player in this lobby.
Private data
Data that is only visible to an individual player who is in the lobby.
Private lobby
A lobby that does not appear in query results and is generally only accessible using a lobby code.
Public data
Data that is visible to anyone, including players who are not in the lobby.
Public lobby
A type of lobby that is accessible to all players and appears in the query list.
Session
A session is a high-level abstration lever that manages the Lobby, Relay, and Matchmaker services. Sessions manage the entire multiplayer lifecycle by automatically combining Lobby, Relay, Matchmaker, and your networking library (Netcode) into a single unified system.
Session code
A randomly generated alphanumeric code or a string set by 'CreateOrJoinSessionAsync' that players can share with other players to join a private session (lobby). If the session code doesn't already exist a new session is created.
Query filter
A filter that can be provided as part of a query request to limit the results returned to lobbies that match specific properties.
Query list
A list of available public lobbies returned by a search query.
Quick Join
Players can use this to quickly find and join a lobby without having to manually select a specific lobby from a query list.
Relay
Unity Relay offers a way for game developers to securely provide increased connectivity between players by using a join code style workflow.