PlayFab Digest: May Feature Updates

Welcome to the PlayFab Digest! We’re excited to share the latest PlayFab updates. This month’s updates focus simplifying user management, enhancing security, and introducing modern authentication with Microsoft Entra ID. Let’s look at what’s new for the month of May!

Bulk Edit Tools for Developer Role Management

What’s New:

Studio admins can now update permissions and title roles for multiple users at once with bulk editing in Game Manager. Previously, role changes had to be made for one user at a time — a significant burden when onboarding a new team or reorganizing access across a large studio.

Bulk editing works with merge semantics: you specify which roles to grant or revoke, and existing roles are preserved. Granting a new title role won't remove the ones a user already has, and revoking one role won't affect the others. Studio-level permissions and per-title roles can both be updated in the same operation, so you can fully configure a new team member's access in a single save.

How to Get Started:

In Game Manager, navigate to Users.

• Select the users you want to update.
• Click Bulk Edit.
• Configure studio permissions (Admin access, Billing summary access) and per-title roles as needed.
• Review your changes and click Save.

IP Allow List per Title Secret

What’s New:

We've added IP allowlists for title secret keys, a simple way to ensure your keys are only used from IPs you trust.

You can configure up to 20 IPv4 or IPv6 addresses or CIDR ranges on each title secret key. Privileged calls (Server and Admin APIs) made with that key are then only accepted from IPs on the list. An empty list keeps today's behavior, so the rollout is fully opt in, and every change to a key is captured in the existing PlayStream secret key event, so your audit trail is unchanged.

How to Get Started: 

• In Game Manager, navigate to Title Settings → Secret Keys.
• Edit (or create) a secret key.
• Toggle Enable IP allowlist.
• Add your egress IPs / CIDR ranges, one per line (e.g. 203.0.113.7 or 2001:db8::/32). Double check the list, since an incorrect entry will block IPs not in the list.
• Save.

Preview: Microsoft Entra ID Authentication for PlayFab APIs

PlayFab now supports Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) as an authentication method for Admin, Server, and title-level entity APIs calls. 

Note: This feature is in preview. It is intended for evaluation and early adoption, not yet for production titles. 

What’s New:

You can now authenticate to PlayFab APIs using a delegated Entra ID access token instead of a developer secret key. Your application signs in a user via standard OAuth 2.0 public client flows (authorization code with PKCE, device code, or interactive browser) and passes the resulting Bearer token in the Authorization header. 

Note: Entra ID authentication applies to Admin, Server, and title-level entity APIs only. Player-facing Client APIs continue to use session tickets and entity tokens. 

Benefits:

• No shared secrets. Public client flows eliminate long-lived secret keys. Tokens are short-lived and scoped to the signed-in user.
• Individual accountability. Every API call is tied to a specific user identity, simplifying auditing.
• Conditional access. Your organization can enforce Entra ID policies such as IP restrictions, MFA, and device compliance. 

How to Get Started:

• Register a public client application in your Entra ID tenant and add the PlayFab delegated permission (plugin).
• Ensure the calling user is added to the PlayFab studio and assigned as a title admin in Game Manager.
• Use MSAL to sign in and obtain an access token with the scope 448adbda-b8d8-4f33-a1b0-ac58cf44d4c1/plugin.
• Call PlayFab APIs with Authorization: Bearer <token> instead of X-SecretKey.

Current limitations:

• No SDK support yet. The PlayFab SDKs do not currently support Entra ID authentication. Use direct HTTP calls with the Authorization: Bearer <token> header as shown in the documentation. SDK support is planned for a future release.
• Documentation will be available in the next couple of days.

Thanks for checking out the great features that we’ve delivered in May! We’ll see you next month for more exciting updates in our upcoming PlayFab Digest. Happy Developing!

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