Investigating backend changes around July 27

What do you need help with?

Question

Installation method

Unity Asset Store

Issue area

Performance / Latency

Impact

Major - a core flow is broken

Unity version

6000.2.7.f2

Convai Unity SDK version

3.3.0

Target platform

XR / AR / MR

Where does it happen?

Custom scene

Short summary

Requests across multiple characters silently stopped getting responses after July 27

What happened?

I’m using Convai Unity SDK v3.3.0 (gRPC) with multiple characters active simultaneously in one scene, each on its own gRPC connection — including Fatima and Layla (Layla is a translator/interpreter relative to Fatima). I talk to them via triggers (e.g. “TriggerTranslation” on Layla), live audio streaming, and text sends (e.g. forwarding Fatima’s translated response to Layla as text). It’s normal for two characters’ sessions to be active at once.

A full scenario with both characters worked repeatedly on July 27. Re-tested July 29 with zero code changes — same build — and it’s failed every time since. Requests (across all three types: triggers, audio, and text) now intermittently get no response at all — the client just hangs waiting on the stream. WriteAsync/CompleteAsync succeed, but MoveNext() in ReceiveResultFromServer() just hangs forever. These requests don’t show on the Convai dashboard either. I’m not sure whether I’m hitting a concurrency issue or not, and if I am, why it was working on July 27 and before that.

I’ve spent two days debugging my own code with no changes found — since this touches my whole architecture, I wanted to check whether something changed server-side before restructuring further.

Could you check: (1) any concurrency-limit changes around July 27–29, (2) backend/infra changes in that window?

Details:

API key: ****898f1
Fatima: ****be02e — Layla: ****be02e
SDK: v3.3.0 (gRPC)

I checked the relevant documentation, resources, and similar forum posts before posting.

on

I confirm that I did not include API keys, tokens, passwords, secrets, private character data, private conversation logs, or customer data.

on

Thank you for reporting this.

We are currently investigating the issue and will get back to you once we have an update.

Hello,
Is there any update regarding the issue?

We have made some improvements on the gRPC side related to response time. However, due to gRPC limitations, it is not possible to make it perform as well as the newer SDK infrastructure.

Could you please test your character on convai.com using the Legacy Playground and let us know how it behaves there? Are you experiencing the same issue?

If the issue also happens in Legacy Playground, please share the relevant Session IDs.

If the issue happens only on the Unity side, please share the Unity logs along with the Session ID.

When sharing Session IDs, please also include a short description of what issue happened in each specific session so we can review them properly.

Did you try again? Is everything working properly now?