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Base44 Actors: Realtime Multiplayer Backend

Base44View original changelog

Base44 introduced Actors, a backend primitive for features where multiple clients connect to the same live session, such as chat rooms and multiplayer games. Actors let apps send and receive messages in realtime, persist session state between idle periods and run scheduled work. They are managed through a new actors SDK module and the actors deploy and actors delete CLI commands.

Key Takeaways

  • Actors are a new realtime backend primitive, designed for features where multiple clients connect to the same live session.
  • Each session has one shared live instance, so every client connected to the same session id sees the same authoritative state.
  • Session state persists between idle periods, so rooms do not lose data when users disconnect for a while.
  • Actors support scheduled work through timers, enabling shared countdowns and recurring background tasks.
  • A new actors SDK module handles connecting, subscribing and sending messages from the client.
  • The actors deploy and actors delete CLI commands manage actors the same way developers already manage backend functions.

Realtime Sessions for Base44 Apps

Base44 added documentation and tooling for Actors, a new backend resource built for features where several clients share one live session. Typical examples are chat rooms, multiplayer games, collaborative boards and live auctions. Until now, apps on the platform had backend functions for request and response work. Actors cover the case where many users need to talk to the same running instance at the same time.

How Actors Work

Each actor represents a session, and every client connected to the same session id shares that one live instance. Clients connect over a persistent connection, send messages, and receive messages from the actor in realtime. The actor holds the authoritative state: it receives inputs from clients, applies them, and broadcasts the result back to everyone connected.

Base44 documents several core concepts: sessions, connections, state, messages and timers. Session data persists between idle periods, so a room does not lose its state when everyone briefly disconnects. Actors can also run work on a schedule through timers, which suits countdowns, shared clocks and recurring background jobs tied to a session.

SDK and CLI Support

Developers connect to actors, subscribe to them and send messages through the new actors SDK module. Base44 also added two CLI commands. actors deploy pushes locally defined actors to Base44, in the same way backend functions are deployed. actors delete removes deployed actors. Base44 published an Actors Overview page alongside an SDK reference and a reference page for each CLI command.

Why It Matters

Realtime multiplayer behavior is hard to build on a request and response backend. By offering stateful, shared sessions as a built-in resource, Base44 lets builders add live collaboration, presence and game-style interactions without running separate realtime infrastructure.