Excessively high average playtime
complete
Ricardo Ruiz
Hi, we have an excessively high average playtime per user as you can see in the attached image, as our Unreal game is multiplayer, we think it is caused by the server, as there is always a user connected at all times (being the game still in development), we need the server to be able to send analytics too, is there any way to make it not count as an active user? Or maybe we are using the Unreal SDK in the wrong way?
Nicky Toma
complete
Nicky Toma
under review
Nicky Toma
Hi Ricardo. I took a quick look and I believe the playtime is that high because the game is sending an abnormal amount of session end events. The ratio between end events and user events was at one point last week 3000. Now its around 200. It should be 1. So what I believe is happening is that for some reason, somewhere there are too many end session events being sent, and because of this the playtime for all those fake sessions is being added up. If you by any chance are sending events from a server, you should use the Collection API (https://docs.gameanalytics.com/integrations/api/), not the Unreal SDK. Also, if you use manual session handling, that could definitely lead to more end session events.
Ricardo Ruiz
Nicky Toma: Hi Nicky, thanks for the reply, indeed the problem seems to be the session end events, every few seconds one is being sent by the server, do you happen to know when session events are being called to be able to identify possible causes, we are not using manual session handling. Some events are being sent by clients and others are being sent by the server, but both use the same installation of the Unreal SDK plugin.
Nicky Toma
Ricardo Ruiz: Hey Ricardo. Session end events should be sent when the user quits the game or the app goes into background in any way. Then after they return it should be counted as a new session.
Unfortunately I don't have that much technical information to share, I know that servers should usually use the Collection API, as our premade SDK's are meant to be run from clients. Whether this causes any issues with session end events we are not sure.
It should be only those 3 cases though, when sessions should be ended.