Google is retiring several Play Games features


You probably don't use the Google Play Games app (I sure can't remember the last time I did), but many games on the Play Store use its API. Developers can use the Play Games API to save game data to the cloud, add achievements, and integrate analytics.
Today on the Android Developers Blog, Google announced it would shut down several features in Play Games Services. These include Gifts, Requests, and Quests. All three features will be supported until March 31st, 2018, so developers have a while to find alternatives.
Other features like achievements and multiplayer will not be affected. You can find more information at the source link below.
In December, we announced the end of support for the creation of new iOS accounts given the low usage of GPGS on iOS. Additionally, our latest Native SDK release (2.3) will no longer support integration with iOS and going forward we will not be supporting or updating the iOS SDK. 

We've also examined the features that GPGS offers. While developers use engagement and reporting tools extensively, there is lower usage for Gifts, Requests, and Quests. We therefore plan to stop supporting Gifts, Requests, and Quests. In order to help developers that do use these features plan for their removal, we will leave them open for 12 months, deactivating them by 31st March 2018. We'll be continuing support for other features such as Sign-in, Achievements, Leaderboards and Multiplayer. 

Play games services remains an important part of the tools we provide developers, and we're working hard on future GPGS updates. We continue to be strongly committed to providing high quality services for Games, including new tools such as official Firebase support for Unity and C++ developers, and integration with Firebase Analytics. These changes allow us to focus our efforts on the services developers value most to build high quality, engaging games. 

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