Joystick vs Metaplay
Joystick
getjoystick.com
Metaplay
metaplay.ioSide by side
| Figure | Joystick | Metaplay |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | €195/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 17 |
| Spec score · Game LiveOps Software | 7.6 (#20) | 9.0 (#5) |
| Headquarters | Hong Kong | Helsinki, Finland |
| Integrations | Joystick offers a native Google Sheets integration, webhooks, a REST API, and SDKs including JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, PHP, C#, Java, Unity, Unreal, and Godot. | Metaplay lists analytics export to BigQuery and S3, purchase validation for Google Play, App Store and Steam, and sign-in options including Google, Apple, Facebook, Steam and custom web login. |
| Intended users | The site identifies game, augmented reality, enterprise software, HR tech, and consumer app teams among its users. | Metaplay describes its audience as ambitious game studios building server-authoritative games, from prototype through global launch, including teams operating multiple titles. |
| Support | The site says its team supports customers through onboarding, and the Enterprise offering includes one-on-one onboarding and support. | The pricing page offers community Discord support, weekday engineer support tiers, and a critical incident add-on with 24/7 availability and a one-hour response SLA. |
Plans
Metaplay
- Community supportFree
- Community SupportFree
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- Starter€195 a month
- Starter€195 a month
- Pre-launch€995 a month
- Pre-Launch€995 a month
- Standard support€1,500 a month
- Standard Support€1,500 a month
In their own words
Joystick
Joystick is a remote configuration platform for app and game teams, delivered through the web and an API. Teams can change settings or content without releasing an app update, using JSON, XML, YAML, and other formats. It supports feature flags, phased rollouts, player targeting, live operations, localization, content management, and generative-AI prompt management. A/B tests and segmentation can deliver variants to selected users. Deployment controls include multiple environments, staged and scheduled changes, protected environments, and review policies. Revision history, audit logs, permissions, access controls, and JSON Schema validation track and protect changes. Integrations include Google Sheets, webhooks, a REST API, and SDKs for JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, PHP, C#, Java, Unity, Unreal, and Godot; Cocos is also listed. Cloud is hosted with edge delivery and caching. Enterprise is single-tenant with custom sizing and pricing.
Metaplay
Metaplay is a backend platform for building and operating live-service games. It uses a server-authoritative C# game server with a Unity client library and shared client-server logic. Its LiveOps dashboard includes player segmentation, A/B testing, over-the-air configuration updates, events, economy management, and player support tools. The SDK also includes guilds, social features, leaderboards, leagues, and asynchronous matchmaking; synchronous matchmaking is in active development. Hosting choices include managed Metaplay Cloud, customer AWS infrastructure, another Kubernetes cluster, or on-premises deployment. The platform supports Unity games on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, and WebGL, with Unity 2020.3 LTS and later. The free plan provides the full SDK and a local server for local development. Starter costs €195 a month. Managed Metaplay Cloud supports single-region deployments; multi-region deployments are supported on self-hosted infrastructure.