Organization of multiplayer on a mobile game using the engine?

Question

Game development

Choosing an engine for a multiplayer game. On the unity calculator https://unity3d.com/en/services/multiplayer calculated that multiplayer on a game with a million installations (abstract figure) will cost from $1000 to $20000 per month. It if only their server to yuzat or in general any?
Is it possible to use your own server when working with engines such as unity, coco, libGDH and others? Or is there a tricky part in their contracts regarding multiplayer?

Answer 1

According to your link, one of the unity services , they are optional in themselves, the engine is not locked on them in any way, you can use any servers as you like and as much as you like. There is only one restriction in the license for the engine that can somehow theoretically force you to pay more money - the income of the organization. If you are on the free version of the unit and earn more than $100 thousand a year, then this is considered a violation of the license. If you do not use any unity services, or use them within the free limit, then you do not need to pay any money.

Answer 2

1) I'll break your dreams a little. Achieving a million app installs is very, very, very difficult and unrealistic even for experienced developers who already have many games and applications.
2) The period of half a year for a simple game if it is at least a little more complicated than another flappy bird clone is unrealistic, especially considering, as I understand it, with a complete lack of knowledge.
3) The engine is absolutely to the light bulb which one to study, which one is more convenient for a particular game or purely for you, and do it on that. Either take a ready-made convenient engine in which everything is already there and get into anal slavery for money with a license, or take your favorite YAP and write your collective farm from scratch but for free.
4) On what to do the server is also absolutely up to the light bulb. Either you take the convenience and pay other developers for it, or you write your bike long and hard.
5) If you are aiming for a game like clash royale, then keep in mind that the costs will be even a huge number of times more. Can't draw? Pay the artists. Don't know where to get sounds and music? Pay sound engineers and musicians or buy commercial licenses. Can't program very well? Please pay programmers. Toad strangles to pay for a very convenient commercial engine? Pay for it, buy it or pay programmers to write the engine. Do you want multiplayer? Pay for rent/purchase of libraries/server-side implementations. No heap of servers where to place all this? Pay for server rentals. Game not downloading? Fork out huge sums for good advertising. Can't make normal advertising banners and videos? Pay those who do it.
In general, either you have a big wallet and you simply and easily take a ready-made engine with a bunch of editors and a network part, pay / buy content for the game, and in a short time of half a year, you collect an analogue of clash royale using tutorials. Either you take a set of bricks\cement\nails\boards (for example, libgdx) for free, write the necessary part of the engine for yourself, write the actual game logic for this engine, draw all the models\textures yourself from scratch so as not to violate anyone's license, or take it from completely free licenses, then rent a couple of Dushman servers for a penny where you place game servers (chat \ mm \ game servers), pay Google for a developer account, go through 9 circles of hell to get your game posted on Google Play. Then it remains only to personally attack gaming forums\chats\groups in order to advertise your game. In order to port the game to ios, you will also have to buy a developer account from epla, a macbook / iMac, and preferably an iPhone / iPad. Then it remains to rewrite the floor of the game or the entire game on another PL, taking into account specific moments for the platform and go through 9 circles of hell in order to place the game in iTunes.
All of the above is suitable, I repeat, for a game like clash royale. For a game like flappy bird, almost nothing is needed except for developer accounts, advertising and Apple technology if a port to ios is planned. So the price tag of "$1000 to $20000 per month" is even very low and the costs both during development and after can be many times higher, which is why they actually try to donate for every sneeze and fart in games.