​

PlayFab Items and Inventory Overview

​

Key concepts

• Catalog - A catalog is a collection of all the items that are available in your game. Catalogs offer an easy way to manage your game’s virtual items. For more information, see the Catalog Overview.
• Catalog Items – Individual items defined in your catalog. They can represent any kind of virtual good, such as weapons, outfits, power-ups, loot boxes, etc. You can customize properties and behaviors to suit your game design.
• Catalog Stores - Stores allow you to create multiple item listings for different purposes, such as seasonal events, promotions, or testing. See Stores.
• Bundles - Bundles are catalog items that contain references to other items. When a player purchases a bundle, the referenced items are unpacked and added to their inventory.
• Subscriptions - Subscriptions grant time-based access to durable goods. Items within a subscription are available in a player’s inventory for the duration of the subscription. See Subscriptions.
• Player Inventory Collections - Inventory is a record of the items that a player owns in your game. It contains information about item amounts, virtual currency balances, and custom properties. All player accounts can have one or more inventories called Collections.
• Stacks - Stacks allow multiple distinct instances of the same item to exist within a single inventory, each with their own amount and custom properties. See Stacks.
• Virtual Currency - Virtual currency is a type of item used as a medium of exchange in your game. You can use virtual currency to buy items from the catalog or a store, implement soft currency from in-app purchases, or drive gameplay mechanics.

​

Key APIs

​

Inventory Management

• GetInventoryItems - Retrieve the current inventory of an entity. Supports pagination with ContinuationToken and bulk loading via TurboLoading.
• AddInventoryItems - Add items directly to a player’s inventory.
• SubtractInventoryItems - Reduce item amounts in a player’s inventory.
• UpdateInventoryItems - Set item amounts or modify Display Properties on inventory items.
• DeleteInventoryItems - Remove entire stacks of items from a player’s inventory.

​

Purchasing and Trading

• PurchaseInventoryItems - Buy catalog items or bundles using virtual currency. Deducts the currency from the player’s inventory and grants the purchased item.
• TransferInventoryItems - Transfer items between players, between a player’s inventory collections, or between stacks within the same inventory.

​

Batch Operations

• ExecuteInventoryOperations - Batch up to 10 inventory operations (Add, Subtract, Update, Purchase, Transfer, Delete) in a single atomic request. If any operation fails, the entire batch is rolled back.

​

History and Diagnostics

• GetTransactionHistory - Retrieve transaction events from a player’s inventory. Supports filtering by timestamp and pagination for reviewing the full operation history. See Transaction History.

​

Reliability

• Idempotency - All inventory APIs support an IdempotencyId parameter to safely retry requests without duplicate side effects. IDs are enforced for 14 days. See Idempotency.