Changelog: Player Relationships API and dashboard UX

TL;DR

• The new player relationships API is now live: you can use it to easily build friends, followers and other social systems
• We're migrating the backend router to improve performance and make it easier to build new APIs
• The dashboard has received several UX improvements

January 2026 overview

Happy new year! At the start of this month we released Talo's latest service: the player relationships API. This API is designed to make it easy to build social systems like friends or followers.

Player relationships work by creating links (subscriptions) between players, allowing players to listen for events (broadcasts). You can choose to create unidirectional (followers systems) or bidirectional (friends systems) relationships and once the subscriptions are confirmed, you can send data between players via the Talo socket.

Check out the player relationships feature page to learn more.

Frontend updates

• Toasts, everywhere!: more actions across the dashboard now provide better visual feedback. Actions like updating scores, deleting players and creating stats will now show contextual toasts.

Platform updates

• Player relationships API: create subscriptions between players to send data between them.
• New router: dashboard routes now use a new router. The new router is fast, type-safe and easier to work with than the previous one.

Godot plugin updates

• Player relationships API: the new player relationships API is now available. We've also added a comprehensive "friends demo", showcasing how to add friends, accept requests and send messages between friends.
• Channel search API: you can now provide a search term when listing channels.

You can get the latest version of the Godot plugin on GitHub. Please make sure to give us a star ⭐️ if you've enjoyed using the plugin!

Unity package updates

• Player relationships API: player relationships are now available in the Unity package too. The "friends demo" scene demonstrates adding friends, accepting requests and messaging.
• Channel search API: you can now provide a search term when listing channels.
• Socket improvements: the Talo socket now supports a custom health check, improving its reliability.

The latest version of the Unity package is available on GitHub. We'd love it if you could give us a star ⭐️ if you've found the package useful!

Coming up this year

As always, there are plenty of things in the pipeline. Here's a list of things planned for the next few months:

1. Improvements to the player relationships API including sending targeted messages and subscription props for arbitrary metadata.
2. New graphs in the dashboard in areas like the stat metrics page, leaderboard entries page and players page.
3. Google Play authentication - similar to the existing Steamworks integration.
4. Server access keys to open up admin-level actions via the REST API.
5. Improvements to the player auth API (changing usernames and making sessions more secure).

Join the community

Join us on Discord to keep up to date with all the latest additions and improvements!