Friends list & messaging API now live for Godot & Unity

TL;DR

• What's new? Talo's Player Relationships API is now live for the Godot plugin and Unity package.
• What's changed? You can now build friends lists, follower systems and player-to-player messaging with just a few lines of code.

Persistent player-to-player subscriptions

Player Relationships work through a simple pub/sub model. When Player A subscribes to Player B and the subscription is confirmed, Player A receives all messages that Player B sends. These subscriptions are stored persistently, so you can query them like any other game data.

This makes it straightforward to build social features. You can check if a subscription exists between two players, list all of a player's subscriptions or filter to find mutual subscriptions. The data is there when you need it.

Real-time messaging between players

Once players are subscribed to each other, they can send messages in real-time. Players can broadcast their current status, high scores, rare item finds or any custom game event. All subscribers receive messages instantly through the Talo Socket - no polling or manual checking needed.

You can send plain text, JSON data or whatever your game needs. This flexibility lets you build any type of social feature that you can think of for your game.

Flexible relationship types

Different games need different social structures. Player Relationships supports both one-way and two-way subscriptions:

One-way relationships work like following someone on Twitter. Player A subscribes to Player B, but it doesn't go both ways. This is useful for asymmetric connections where the subscribed-to player doesn't need to know about their subscribers.

Two-way relationships work like traditional friend lists. When both players accept, they're automatically subscribed to each other. Great for co-op games where you want matched pairs.

You can mix both types in the same game to build exactly the social system your game needs.

Event-driven notifications

Your game gets notified instantly when relationship events happen through the Talo Socket. These events keep you informed:

• Request received - Another player sent a relationship request
• Request confirmed - Someone accepted your relationship request
• Request cancelled - A pending request was deleted before confirmation
• Relationship ended - A subscription was deleted by one of the players
• Message received - A message arrived from a subscribed player

All events fire in real-time with no polling required. These events make it easy for your game to respond with UI updates.

Friends list demo

The Godot plugin and Unity package both include a complete friends list demo showing the full flow: searching for players, creating subscriptions, accepting requests, displaying online statuses and messaging between players. You can drop the sample into your project and adapt it for your needs.

The demo integrates with player presence (Godot, Unity) to show off how you can filter on custom statuses (like "looking for friends") to find available players.

Simple integration

Getting started with Player Relationships takes just a few function calls. The API handles request flows, real-time messaging and notifications automatically, so you can focus on making your social features feel good instead of debugging WebSockets.

Check out the docs for Godot or Unity for implementation details and examples. For a full overview of the feature and frequently asked questions, visit the Player Relationships page.

Share your feedback

We'll be continuing to improve Player Relationships in the coming weeks - like adding support for subscription props (metadata about a subscription) and targetted broadcasts (sending messages to one or more specified players). If you have any other feedback, you can reach out to us on Discord or create an issue on GitHub.