Our Authentication Architecture

We use BrainCloud External Authentication (AuthenticateExternal) as our primary auth method.
We do not use AuthenticateAnonymous at all.

Our flow is:

Client calls our own backend server with a device identifier (SystemInfo.deviceUniqueIdentifier) Our server creates/finds an account in our own identity provider using a deterministic anonymous ID derived from the device identifier Our server then calls BrainCloud S2S API (SYS_CREATE_USER_EXTERNAL_AUTH) to create a BrainCloud profile before returning a response to the client Our server returns a user ID and access token to the client The client then calls AuthenticateExternal(userId, accessToken, externalAuthName, forceCreate: true)

The relevant server-side code (Step 3):

public async Task<AccountData> EnsureExternalAccountAsync(string externalId) { var account = await BrainCloudS2SClient.CallAsync<AccountData>( "friend", "GET_PROFILE_INFO_FOR_EXTERNAL_AUTH_ID_IF_EXISTS", ...); if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(account.BrainCloudProfileId)) { account = await BrainCloudS2SClient.CallAsync<AccountData>( "user", "SYS_CREATE_USER_EXTERNAL_AUTH", ...); } return account; } The Problem

Since launch, zero users are counted as New Users in the BrainCloud dashboard.
Every user appears as a Returning User.

Questions

Q1. When AuthenticateExternal is called and the profile already exists (created earlier via SYS_CREATE_USER_EXTERNAL_AUTH S2S), does BrainCloud return "newUser": "false" — even if the user has never called AuthenticateExternal before?

Q2. Does BrainCloud's New User analytics (retention cohorts, DAU new/returning breakdown) rely on the newUser flag from AuthenticateExternal, on the profile's createdAt timestamp, or something else?

Q3. If the S2S pre-creation is the cause, what is the recommended pattern?

Should we remove the S2S pre-creation and let AuthenticateExternal(forceCreate: true) be the sole profile creator? Or is there a way to mark an S2S-created profile so BrainCloud still counts the first AuthenticateExternal call as a New User event?

It's been resolved. Thank you for your response!

Q1: The removed player is completely excluded from reward calculation, so if the deletion happens before the job runs, that player is never iterated over and receives no rank or rewards.
Q2: Yes, the modified score will be used. The job always reads live state. Note that whether the score actually gets modified depends on the leaderboard type (e.g., for the LOW_VALUE type, only updates if the new score is less than the existing)
Q3: No backfilling, the next joiner goes to the latest instance, not the freed spot in ^2. No loop over earlier instances (^1, ^2) ever happens. The next joiner goes to ^3 (or ^4 if ^3 is full). The freed spot in ^2 stays empty permanently.

brainCloud developers have just release several playable builds of our famous examples! See our cool features in action. Find them at https://getbraincloud.com/demos for Windows, Mac, online and mobile.