Stash's unified catalog: what it is and 5 key benefits

It’s common practice to treat users’ web shop accounts and in-game accounts as separate but linked - but that means segmentation, personalization, and purchase limits are separate, too. In the end, that results in you doing double the work to keep players’ web shop and in-game accounts in sync.

But Stash’s product philosophy is based around a different way to operate: Stash always integrates right into your existing tech stack, just like another game client. 

We unite the in-game and web catalogs into a single, unified catalog that you can operate from the same backend as your in-game shop - so there’s no new external tool you need to manage. Now, the moment your web shop loads and a user signs in, your offers are fetched in real-time directly from your game's backend - and identical to your in-game store. That includes the text, price, graphic assets, and whatever else you pass through.  

This kind of seamless integration makes it easier to launch and maintain a web shop without disrupting your existing operations or workflows - and it’s the only way you can merge a users’ in-game and web shop accounts into one. So instead of doing double the work by manually replicating segmentations, offers, personalization, and shared purchases in two platforms, a unified catalog automatically updates your web catalog in real-time every time you change the in-game catalog.

Here, we’re diving deeper into the benefits of operating a single, unified product catalog that combines your users’ in-game and webshop accounts into one:

1. Automatically personalize offers 

Likely, you serve your players highly personalized products based on layers of segmentation - taking into account everything from their current level and recent game events to spend behavior and even purchasing preferences. 

To do the same on a web shop and show different groups of players “personalized” deals, most web shop providers require you to manually migrate segmentation rules to their web shop dashboard. But this makes it impossible to offer a catalog that’s both identical to what players are seeing in the game and truly personalized on the user-level in real time.

By unifying your in-game and web shop catalogs, however, you can display offers specific to each player (true personalization). Because it’s unified, it pulls all your pre-existing segmentation and player information directly from the server side - the same source as your game - to the web automatically and in real time. This means every player sees a web storefront that’s unique to them based on their latest in-game catalog, data, and segmentation. 

Showing players offers that are tailored specifically to them improves their experience on your web store, increases conversion rates, and encourages them to keep returning to the web shop so they can keep enjoying the customized experience.

One of our developer partners - Snowprint Studios - shows players personalized, limited-time in-game offers for Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus based on campaigns they recently completed and champions they recently unlocked. The slim time frame and high appeal of these offers makes it essential for players to be able to access them both in-game and on the web. Check out the example below: first, a player unlocks the Deathleaper character in-game. Then, they see a personalized offer that lasts just a few hours for that character in the game's shop. That same offer appears immediately on the web shop, identical to how it appears in-game.

2. Enforce purchase limits across the web and mobile

The moment your web and in-game catalogs fall out of sync, you risk refunds or chargebacks and become vulnerable to exploitation, like players redeeming a one-time purchase offer in-game and then again on the web. Since it’s impossible to enforce and update purchase limits across in-game and web without real-time synchronization, studios usually avoid offering more complex, higher-value deals on their web shops - and stick to basic, universally accessible resource bundles instead. But your highest spenders aren’t buying basic resource packs - they want the limited higher-value bundles and battle passes.

It’s the same reason why many developers also don’t push their entire in-game catalog to the web - if their game has dozens of offers, they can’t afford the time and resources it takes to keep all of these in sync and updated on the webshop. That’s a missed opportunity, though: sharing your full catalog to the web shop can boost metrics like purchase rate and average order value as players find more deals and products they’re interested in - and it makes your web shop feel more legitimate and familiar.

However, a unified product catalog makes it possible to enforce purchase limits automatically and publish your entire catalog to the web because it pulls your existing in-game user accounts and rules in real-time. There’s no need to create a separate set of rules for your web shop catalog and communicate these to your provider because the unified catalog integrates directly with your existing content management system. As a result, purchase limits are automatically applied and updated to avoid any errors or exploitation. For example, if a user purchases a battle pass in the game, their in-game account and webshop account are treated as one: that battle pass appears as sold out on the webshop - and vice-versa.

3. Replicate your in-game assets on the web

As players go from in-game to the web, you can create a better experience for them by replicating how your game looks and feels. Maintaining an identical UI keeps players engaged and immersed in your game’s universe - not to mention, offers safety and security in an unfamiliar environment.

To recreate the in-game shopping experience on your web shop, a unified catalog automatically renders your game’s assets in real-time and optimizes them for the web - regardless of how detailed or granular the metadata. Stash does that automatically by pulling your assets directly from your servers, meaning you don’t have to upload them manually. This is especially important when you’re running events with special or themed offers, like Christmas or Halloween bundles. 

For example, our customer Snowprint sells champion packs in Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus. If the player already owns one of the champions, it appears gray in the pack and reduces the overall price. With Stash’s unified catalog, Snowprint can sell the same exact offer in their web shop. You can see below the web shop automatically displays Snowprint’s in-game Unity assets - including the grayed out champion, price reduction, background image, offer description, and more. Again, none of this requires Snowprint to do any manual work. 

4. Avoid double work: manage your in-game and web shop offers in one place

All of the work we mentioned above that studios put into linking and maintaining two separate players accounts and catalogs can mean manually: 

• Uploading a list of asset IDs
• Providing graphics for each asset
• Launching and managing limited-time offers
• Updating the catalog with new seasonal or live ops-linked offers

This means every time you create a new offer - or tweak an existing one - you have to update your catalogs twice: once to your game and once to the web shop. That’s a lot of work especially for studios that have active live ops event schedules, which can involve launching several new offers every week. 

Operating a server-side unified catalog means that a Stash webshop pulls directly from the same source as your in-game catalog: the same assets, price data, player segments, liveops offers, etc. As a result, you don’t need to change anything about your in-game catalog workflow or use an external tool for Stash to upload and adjust your offers from the web - our catalog integrated directly with your current game backend, whether you’re using Playfab, Nakama, or even a custom platform you built yourself. 

For example, you could decide to offer a discount on battle passes in-game for an event ending soon. With a unified catalog, the moment you launch this discount in-game, it’s live on your web shop, too. There’s no need to head to a separate platform, manually upload new products, or keep track of all the updates you want to push and make sure they’re synced. 

Wait, what about web-exclusive offers?

You may be wondering - if there’s no external tool to manage the web shop catalog, how do you create web-exclusive offers? 

Well, that works just like your existing process: the same way that you currently push offers to test vs. production stores, or App Store Connect vs. Google Play stores, your web shop acts like any other store in your backend. Within your existing catalog management system, you can select to only push your offers to the web store directly. 

As an example we’ll show you how this would work in Playfab - but it would work the same in any internal or external content management system. Head to the page called “Stores” and create a new store channel called “Web Shop”. From there, you’re able to populate your web shop with items and bundles. If you want the offer to be web-exclusive, only add it to the web shop, not the in-game store. 

5. Use your game’s existing API, not ours

Other web shop providers claim to “plug in” to your existing systems, using phrases like “connected via API to the backend” - but the reality is, this is the providers’ API you need to deal with. At Stash, there’s no API that you need to send a request to for every change or update to your web shop - instead, our integration allows us to call YOUR game’s API, whether you’re using Playfab, Beamable, Pragma, or your own custom backend. It’s the true sense of the idea of plugging into your existing systems.

Let’s say you want to add four new products to your web shop. So you submit four separate requests to your web shop provider’s API. But wait: you actually didn’t mean to launch one of these items yet, so you want to delete it - that’s a fifth request. 

Instead of having your servers push updates to our API, Stash’s unified product catalog calls your API at run time. This means we’re able to handle any amount of requests in real-time with no delay. If a player unlocks a new offer by completing a level, Stash’s catalog will immediately serve them that offer, ensuring players always get the most up-to-date offers and a consistent experience going from in-game to the web, and vice-versa.

It’s also faster and easier to render highly detailed or complex assets when you don’t need to send a request out to an API for every change. All of the information about the product is already in your game - a unified catalog communicates directly with your game’s API to show the right assets in the correct way on the web, no matter how detailed they are.

Stay in sync

Operating two separate catalogs can both limit your web shop’s full capabilities and leave you vulnerable to syncing errors. This impacts players’ experiences, too: it could mean they can only buy resource packs on your shop, or they try to redeem a deal that has already expired.

We built a unified catalog so you get more control over your web shop and offers, maintain the look and feel of your brand, create a better experience for your players, and save time. 

Learn more about the unified catalog in our developer documentation, and talk to us today about setting up and maintaining a web shop - all from one place.