Stream > Case Studies > Rapid Integration of Stream Chat in Bunch's Multiplayer Gaming App

Rapid Integration of Stream Chat in Bunch's Multiplayer Gaming App

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Blockchain
Sensors - Camera / Video Systems

Applicable Industries

Buildings
Cement

Applicable Functions

Maintenance
Product Research & Development

Use Cases

Building Automation & Control
Time Sensitive Networking

Services

System Integration
Testing & Certification

About The Customer

Bunch is a multiplayer video chat gaming app founded in 2017. It enables groups of users to video chat over multiplayer games such as chess, basketball, pool, and trivia. Bunch also supports dozens of well-known games such as Roblox, Monopoly, Minecraft, Mariokart Tour, Catan, and more. During the 2020 global lockdown, millions of users downloaded Bunch to spend quality time with friends and family. The app's core functionality is synchronous video chat, but its asynchronous in-app chat is essential for groups to plan meet-up times, discuss games to play, and talk strategy. As Bunch's daily active users ballooned to over 100,000, the company sought a reliable chat solution from a third-party provider.

The Challenge

Bunch, a multiplayer video chat gaming app, faced a significant challenge in providing a fast-to-market, asynchronous chat solution. As the daily active users of the app surged to over 100,000, the company needed a reliable chat solution from a third-party provider. The engineering team was tasked with finding a gaming chat API that offered a polished UI kit for a professional user experience and rapid implementation. The team also needed a solution with a flexible chat pricing model to suit their unique requirements and an API that developers enjoyed working with. Bunch evaluated several real-time messaging providers, including PubNub, Sendbird, Agora, Redis, and Firebase, before deciding on Stream.

The Solution

Bunch chose to integrate the Stream React Native Chat SDK and UI kit into their app. The developers were able to prototype a chat app in just a few hours and launched with full chat functionality in a month. The bulk of the engineering work to integrate the Stream Chat API was spent refining the user experience to ensure that the chat interface perfectly matched their brand. When the team encountered integration roadblocks, they relied on Stream’s responsive customer success team for support. Stream's flexible pricing plan and customizable API enabled Bunch to launch chat quickly. The integration of Stream Chat allowed Bunch to confidently scale, supporting hundreds of thousands of daily active users without much chat functionality maintenance.

Operational Impact

The integration of Stream Chat into Bunch's app has resulted in a high-performing chat functionality that requires minimal engineering resources to maintain. The chat integration works seamlessly, allowing the Bunch team to focus on building unique solutions. Bunch players who use in-app chat asynchronously to plan games are notably more engaged in the platform than users who do not use Bunch’s messaging feature. The in-app messaging from Stream enables Bunch to cultivate communities that rely on their app to flourish, keeping users returning to their app again and again. The team is now working on Bunch 2.0, a multiplayer, spatial experience that can onramp users into digital ownership through blockchain, with text-based communication remaining an important component.

Quantitative Benefit

Bunch was able to prototype a chat app in just a few hours and fully launch in about a month.
Bunch now supports hundreds of thousands of daily active users without much chat functionality maintenance.
Bunch's user retention metrics have increased after integrating Stream thanks to notifications implementation.