Unity Guide
Publishing to the Google Play store
A quick guide about how to publish a mobile game to the Google Play store
Objective: Publish a 2D mobile game made with Unity to the Google Play store.
In the last post I covered how to implement rewarded video ads in our mobile game with Unity. Now, it’s time to publish our finished game into the Google Play store.
Create a developer account
To start, we’ll need to create our developer account in the next site:
Once in there, we’ll see a button to enter the Google Play console and we’ll have to click it:
Then, we’ll need to select one Google account to be our developer account.
There are 2 types of developer accounts:
- For you (personal)
- For your organization or company
If you, like me, choose a personal account, you will need to provide personal information and pay a 25 USD unique fee to publish your games or apps on the Google Play store:
Once the information was provided and the fee was paid, we’ll be able to see the Google Play Console, where we’ll see all of the apps that we publish and its analytics:
Build your game with Unity
Now that we have our developer account to publish our game in the Google Play store, we need to build our finished game in Unity.
Configure your game settings
To start, let’s open the Build Settings window by clicking on File > Build Settings. Then, let’s open the Player Settings by clicking on the left button at the bottom of the window:
Once opened, let’s make sure to fill the information and set the correct settings for our game to be deployed as we want:
Sign the game
Next, when the information has been filled and the correct settings are applied, we’ll need to create a new keystore. A keystore will allow us to sign the app and identify us as the developer to avoid unauthorized use (it’s mandatory to upload a signed app to the Google Play Store).
So, in order to sign our app with a keystore, let’s open the Keystore Manager window by clicking on the respective button at the Publishing Settings:
Once opened, let’s select to create a new keystore with a new key and select the location to save them. Once selected, let’s set a secure password and fill the respective information that the key needs:
Finally, when we complete the fields, let’s add the key by clicking on the right button at the bottom:
Then, let’s confirm in the window that will be prompted to set the key and the keystore for our project:
Build the game
And now, in order to build our game, let’s return to the Build Settings window, where we’ll need to enable the Build App Bundle (Google Play) option before clicking on the Build button to create an AAB file:
Then, after selecting the folder to build the game, let’s wait for Unity to build it:
Next, the respective folder will be prompted and we’ll see our AAB file. In case that you want an APK file you just need to disable the Build App Bundle (Google Play) option on your build settings.
Remember that the Google Play Store needs an AAB file and not an APK file to publish your game.
Issues found
Now, before moving to publish our game into the Google Play store, let’s take a look at some of the issues that I found before publishing my game and how did I manage to solve them:
Not compliant with the Google Play 64-bit requirement
This error message appeared after uploading my AAB file to the store and it stated that my app bundle had only 32-bit native code. So, what I did to solve it was to:
- Open the Project Settings window
- Select the Player tab
- Go to Other Settings
- Change the configuration of the Scripting Backend to be IL2CPP
- Select both ARMv7 and ARM64 as target architectures
- Build the game again
The bundle was signed in debug mode
This error message appeared after uploading my AAB file too and it stated that my bundle was signed in a debug mode. To solve this I just did make sure that my project had a keystore with a key selected before building my game like we did in the steps above.
The app should have a minimum specified API of level 30
This error message appeared after uploading my AAB file too and it stated that the app should be built with a minimum target API of level 30. So, what I did to solve it was to:
- Open the Project Settings window
- Select the Player tab
- Go to Other Settings
- Change the Minimum API Level to be of level 30
- Change the Target API Level to be of level 30
- Build the game again
Publish the app on the Google Play store
Now that we have our AAB file we’ll need to fill some requirements before publishing it in the Google Play Store.
To start, let’s go to the Google Play Console using our developer account and click on the Create App button to be able to create a new draft of our game:
Once clicked, we’ll need to fill or accept several details to publish our game:
Then, after the fields are completed, let’s click on the Create App button to create the new draft of our game:
Once created, we’ll be able to see the dashboard of our new app:
In the dashboard we’ll see the first steps to take before publishing our app, which include:
One of the steps to take is to answer a questionnaire to rate the game contents, so that it can be available to the proper users when it gets published:
Once we finish the first steps we’ll need to take the production track steps, where we’ll need to:
- Select the countries and regions where our app will be available.
- Create a new version release to be reviewed and finally published.
Once that we select the countries and regions of our app, let’s create a new production release:
In here, we’ll need to upload the AAB file that we built in Unity before:
Finally, once it’s uploaded, let’s just save our release and click on the review button at the bottom of the page. If everything goes as expected we’ll be able to see our app status as In review and we’ll just need to wait some hours or days to see our app published on the Google Play store:
And that’s it, we published our 2D game (made with Unity) onto the Google Play store! :D. I’ll see you in the next post, where I’ll be showing new content about Unity.
If you want to try my game you can view it on the Google Play store here:
Or you can play it online (mobile friendly) or download it (Windows) on here:
Please consider leaving a comment or rating my game, I’d really appreciate your thoughts.
