Licenses
License Options
The Photon Server requires a valid license to run.
Please contact us for any questions you may have!
If you try to start Photon Server without a license, the server will automatically shut down and logs this error:
"Service shutting down: not licensed. Errorcode: 105"
Commercial Licenses
For commercial projects and higher CCU needs please contact us.
Using the License
Photon uses ".license" files, which are provided by Exit Games.
New license files are simply copied into the folder where the Photon executables are.
Other ".license" files have to be removed so that only the ".license" file to be used remains in the folder.
PhotonControl and the Photon Server will read the files on start, so a new license currently requires a restart.
Steps to add a new license or exchange a license:
- Download a license.
- Open Photon Server binaries folder:
a. It should be the "deploy\bin_Win64" folder from the Photon Server SDK from which you start PhotonSocketServer or PhotonControl.
b. If you have PhotonControl already open, click on "Explore Working Path" from the context menu of the tray icon. - Copy the downloaded license file inside that folder.
Make sure to have only one license file in the folder.
Remove any outdated or otherwise undesired license files. - Restart PhotonSocketServer if it is already running.
If you have a running PhotonControl application restart it as well.
Floating Licenses
Photon's "Floating Licenses" are not bound to hardware or IP.
They will run on any machine but need to contact our Floating License Monitor.
On start, this HTTPs call must succeed.
The following hourly contact has to succeed once every 24 hours.
If the Monitor is not available for that long, Photon will shut down.
The License Monitor
Photon does not start without contacting the License Monitor, so we made sure that our License Monitor is highly available.
To achieve this, we use different cloud services, which provide 24/7 availability.
Troubleshooting: License Monitor not available
If Photon can not reach the License Monitor, it fails to start with an error message like this:
"Shutdown request from PhotonHostRuntime: On startup, license monitor must be available / reachable."
The License Monitor has these URIs, at least one of them must be reachable for Photon:
1. Network / DNS issues
To check, if you can connect to the License Monitor, you could use a tool like curl.
curl https://licensesp.exitgames.com
curl https://licensespch.exitgames.com
If both requests fail, contact your network administrator to resolve any network configuration / DNS resolution issues.
2. Firewall settings
Make sure that PhotonSocketServer.exe is allowed to establish outbound connections on port 443 (HTTPS) to the License Monitor URIs (see above).
Check your Windows Firewall as well as any hardware/software firewalls that might be provided by your hosting provider.