Amazon GameOn is a cross-platform competitive gaming service for developers. It is a set of flexible APIs that lets you easily add competitions into your games, allowing your players to compete for real-world prizes fulfilled by Amazon or other in-game rewards.

Registering a game with GameOn is incredibly easy. So easy, that mere seconds after signing up, you’ll see the screen below: complete with API keys, Game IDs, and even a “Public Key." These keys are all you need to get started with integrating GameOn.

This article is intended as a brief overview and explanation of their purpose, which should be helpful as you go through the GameOn documentation and plan your technical integration.

Overview of the API keys

This is what is given to you when you register:
 

These keys are what your game will use to identify itself and communicate with the GameOn servers. One important thing to remember, though, is that any keys you place in your client are visible to anyone who inspects the binary. As a result, you also need to understand what keys should and shouldn’t go into your client:

• Game ID: This key will be passed in the X-Api-Key value in the HTTP request headers. This key is safe to include in your game client.
• Public API Key: This key is used in headers for the Game API calls. It is safe to include in your client.
• Admin API Key: This key is used in headers for the Admin API Calls for managing your tournaments. Since these calls are used to administrate tournaments across all of your users, this key is not safe to include in your public game client and should only be used from your own servers.
• Public Key: GameOn creates an encrypted channel between the device and the GameOn servers which requires both parties to use a public/private RSA key pair. This key is the public half of Amazon’s key pair which your game will use to encrypt payloads being sent to GameOn. Your game will create its own RSA key pair for receiving encrypted payloads from GameOn’s servers. This key is safe to include in your client.

These keys are all you need to communicate with GameOn. And, in my next blog article, I will describe how to test the GameOn API without even writing a single line of code.
 

Click here to learn more about GameOn.