Time limit for displaying items in store

How it works

You can set the display period for an item in the store to:

• Maintain the relevance of the catalog at a given time, for example, during holiday sales.
• Create an item in advance without displaying it in the catalog.
• Motivate users to buy items by displaying a timer next to the item. When you create a catalog interface using site builder, the timer is displayed automatically. When you build the catalog using a custom interface, the timer must be implemented on your side.

• sale of in-game items — virtual items, virtual currency packages, and bundles
• sale of games and DLC via game keys

Configure and update limits

Configure and update in Publisher Account

1. Open your project in Publisher Account and go to the Items catalog > All items > Virtual items section.
2. Click Add and select Virtual items.

3. Specify the following parameters:
   • image
   • SKU
   • one or several groups the item should belong to
   • name
   • description
   • prices

4. To limit the number of times a user can buy an item, set the Limit the number of times one user can buy this item toggle to On and specify the limit.
5. To set how often limits are refreshed:
   1. In the drop-down list, select the period:
      • Daily
      • Weekly
      • Monthly
      • Custom interval. The interval is calculated starting from the start date of the item’s display period in the store.
      • No regular refresh

1. 2. Set the update schedule by specifying the parameters corresponding to the period.

6. To set a display period for the item in the catalog, select Limited time, specify the time zone, start date, and end date. To make the item available indefinitely, select No end date.
7. Click Create item.

Set up and update via API calls

To set a time limit for displaying items in the store, use the following API calls:

• Create virtual item or Update virtual item
• Create virtual currency or Update virtual currency
• Create virtual currency package or Update virtual currency package
• Create bundle or Update bundle
• Create game, Update game by SKU or Update game by ID

• periods[0].date_from with the date and time of the beginning of item display period in YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss±TMZ format, where TMZ is the time zone indicator in hh:mm GMT format.

• periods[0].date_until with the date and time of the end of the item display period in YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss±TMZ format, where TMZ is the time zone indicator in hh:mm GMT format. To not indicate the end of an item’s display period, pass null.

You can set up multiple periods for displaying an item in the store. To do this, pass an array of objects with the start and end dates of all periods in the API calls.

Example:

 1"periods": [
 2      {
 3        "date_from": "2022-06-10T14:00:00+03:00",
 4        "date_until": "2022-06-30T14:00:00+03:00"
 5      },
 6       {
 7        "date_from": "2022-07-10T14:00:00+03:00",
 8        "date_until": "2022-07-30T14:00:00+03:00"
 9      },
10       {
11        "date_from": "2022-08-10T14:00:00+03:00",
12        "date_until": "2022-08-30T14:00:00+03:00"
13      }
14]

The catalog retrieval API calls return the items that are displayed in the store at the time of the request. To obtain information about items whose display period has not yet started or has already expired, pass the show_inactive_time_limited_items parameter with a value of 1 when requesting the catalog.

Display limits in the catalog of items

The display of time-limited items in the catalog depends on how it is implemented — either through the site builder or via API.

Display via site builder

If you use a site builder, time limits are displayed automatically. 30 days before the end of an item’s sale period, a timer automatically appears on the item card and shows the remaining time:

• If more than a week remains until the end of the sale, the timer shows days and hours.
• If more than one day remains until the end of the sale, the timer shows hours and minutes.
• If less than one day remains until the end of the sale, the timer shows minutes and seconds.

Get limit information via API

If the catalog is implemented using API, item’s sale period information is returned in the items.periods array in the following catalog-related API calls:

• Get virtual items list
• Get virtual currency list
• Get virtual currency packages list
• Get bundles list
• Get games list