Photon Products

Different types of multiplayer gameplay or simulations require a specific features set and architecture to maximize gameplay quality, performance and to minimize operations costs. Photon Fusion and Quantum cover these requirements by providing feature-rich SDKs to develop apps for mobile, PC, console, web and extended reality, including the latest generation of smart glasses.

Photon Voice and Chat cover the communication aspects of modern games and simulations and perfectly complement our multiplayer SDKs.

For detailed information on each product, please refer to the relevant documentation section.

The Quadrant - How to Choose the Right SDK

To help in choosing between Fusion or Quantum for your game, we created the Photon Quadrant. It represents the four topologies on how multiplayer games should be built.

Selecting the right topology is foremost based on your gameplay. You should also factor in your target platform(s) and live operations costs. While costs for Photon are the same in all topologies, to go live with a dedicated server topology requires 3rd party server orchestration at additional costs.

Topology	Pros	Cons	Game Examples
Shared Authority Fusion Shared mode	any platform, ideal for mobile and web, cost effective; plugins for anti-cheat and custom server-side code (Enterprise Cloud)	not suited for highly competitive/eSports games; cheating	Peak R.E.P.O. Polygun Arena Ratchet & Clank: Ranger Rumble
Deterministic Predict/Rollback Photon Quantum	any platform, ideal for mobile and web, simple to operate, cost effective, frame-perfect esports, built-in bot SDK and cheat-proof; plugins for anti-cheat and custom server-side code (Enterprise Cloud)	each client has “perfect information”	Stumble Guys No Rest for the Wicked Lucky Defense Windblown World War Armies
Dedicated Server Fusion Server mode	most performant headless Unity build with full customization and self-hosted, Photon Cloud as relay. Cheat-proof	Complex to operate with high costs for external orchestration service which is problematic for mobile f2p and web	Prime Rush Breachers
Client Host Fusion Host mode	cost effective, easy to operate, high gameplay quality possible	not suited for mobile due to unstable connections; unstable game quality due to host and relayed connections; cheating	Among Us 3D Davigo

You can find additional info about choosing the right Fusion topology in the Fusion documentation.

Fusion - High Performance State Sync

Fusion delivers the 6 most essential features found in best-in-class multiplayer titles in all of its topologies.

Forecast Physics

Enables real-time interactions without full physics simulation, delivering significantly lower CPU cost.

Consistent Game Time

High precision time synchronized across all clients for consistent gameplay and easy reasoning about time-dependent systems.

High Performance

Handle thousands of networked actors over hundreds of client connections, including complex interest management.

State Replication

High-performance state distribution on Photon Cloud with per-object full consistency, integrated interest management (AOI), and optional server-side validation.

Remote Rendering

Keeps remote players and objects visually smooth when the network is not.

Custom Server Plugins (Fusion Shared mode)

Optional cloud-side logic for validation, rules and security - add authority without running dedicated servers (Enterprise Photon Cloud). Key component to protect scaling games against hacking and fraud.

Supported Engines

Fusion supports major game engines.
Fusion Shared opens up a new option for any engine without shared authority or plugins.

Game Engine	Topology
Fusion for Unity	Shared, Client Host, Dedicated Server
Fusion for Unreal	Shared - early access
Fusion for Godot	Shared - contact us for early access

Quantum - Deterministic Predict/Rollback Game Engine

Quantum provides a complete deterministic game development stack for building ultra-low-latency multiplayer games with Unity.
Unlike state sync models like Fusion, Quantum utilizes a deterministic prediction/rollback architecture. This ensures that the game simulation remains perfectly synchronized across all clients by transmitting only player inputs, rather than constant object state updates.
Quantum ensures that game logic behaves identically across different CPUs and architectures, providing a fair, competitive environment for cross-play titles.

No netcode - Deterministic simulation

By decoupling the game logic (Simulation) from the engine's rendering (View), Quantum guarantees that the same inputs will produce the exact same results on every device. This eliminates the need for manual netcode synchronization.

Local Physics Feel - Predict/Rollback Technology

Quantum provides a "lag-free" player experience by predicting local actions immediately and automatically rolling back/re-simulating the state if a conflict is detected from the network.

High Performance ECS

Built for speed, the framework uses a memory-aligned ECS written in "Pure C#." This bypasses standard managed-code overhead, allowing for thousands of synced entities and complex physics even on mobile hardware.

Cheat Protection - Cheat Proof without Costs of Dedicated Servers

As the simulation is verified across all clients — and optionally by a server-side plugin — "state-injection" cheats (such as modifying health or speed values) are fundamentally rejected by the deterministic engine.

Go to Quantum documentation

PUN (Photon Unity Networking) - Legacy State Sync

PUN 2 is in maintenance / LTS mode. Aside from some fixes no further feature updates are planned. Existing PUN 2 projects will continue to run. New projects should consider Fusion or Quantum.

Go to PUN documentation

Photon Realtime

Photon Realtime is our low-level API and cross-platform networking engine, available as an SDK for multiple platforms.
Realtime supplies basic features such as rooms/lobbies, matchmaking, region selection, message relay or cloud webhooks.

Photon Fusion, Quantum, PUN 2, Voice and Chat are independent and feature rich high-level APIs. They are all using Realtime as their foundation, for the highest performance in all networking conditions with automated scalability, consistency, and security.

Go to Realtime documentation

Voice

Photon Voice is a high-performance SDK and "Voice as a Service" (VaaS) designed to add real-time, low-latency voice chat to multiplayer games and applications. It utilizes the state-of-the-art Opus codec for crystal clear voice transmission and provides server-side integration to the key voice moderation suppliers GGWP, Voice Patrol and ToxMod by Modulate.

Go to Voice documentation

Chat

Photon Chat is a fast and easy way to add chat functionality to your app or game. Chat is based on a publisher-subscriber model, but comes with additional features. Chat can be used standalone or with any other Photon SDK.

Key features:

• Publish or subscribe to unlimited number of channels
• Send messages across Photon apps and rooms
• Send text messages to channels or as private messages
• Send smart messages: hashtables, dictionaries, string arrays, ints, etc.
• Send messages reliably
• Encrypt messages
• Message buffer per channel

Go to Chat documentation

Back to top