Get started with Play Games Services for Android games

This guide describes how to set up an Android Studio project to use the Play Games Services SDK. You must complete these steps before you set up Play Games Services sign-in and add Play Games Services features to your game.

Before you begin

To prepare your app, complete the steps in the following sections.

App prerequisites

Make sure that your app's build file uses the following values:

  • A minSdkVersion of 19 of higher
  • A compileSdkVersion of 28 or higher

Set up your game in Google Play Console

The Google Play Console is where you manage Google Play games services for your game, and configure metadata for authorizing and authenticating your game. For more information, see Setting Up Google Play Games Services.

Configure your app

In your project-level build.gradle file, include Google's Maven repository and Maven central repository in both your buildscript and allprojects sections:

  buildscript {
    repositories {
      google()
      mavenCentral()
    }
  }

  allprojects {
    repositories {
      google()
      mavenCentral()
    }
  }

Add the Google Play services dependency for the Play Games SDK to your module's Gradle build file, which is commonly

app/build.gradle:

  dependencies {
    implementation "com.google.android.gms:play-services-games-v2:+"
  }

After completing these steps you must set up sign-in in order for the game to access Play Games Services features.