What happens if I don't have crash reporting?

You stay blind to your crashes. Players who hit them mostly just quit or leave a bad review without telling you what went wrong, so the issues hurting you most are invisible. You end up guessing at problems you could have seen and fixed, while crash-driven churn and poor reviews accumulate silently.

When should I set up crash reporting?

Before launch, ideally, so you're capturing crashes from your very first players instead of scrambling to add it during a post-launch crisis. The only time it's reasonable to defer is a tiny prototype with essentially no players. Once real players exist, the case for having crash reporting in place is overwhelming.

Do I Need Crash Reporting for My Game?

Q: Do I need crash reporting for my game?

For almost any released game, yes. Without it you only learn about crashes when players bother to report them, which most won't, so you're blind to the issues driving the most churn and negative reviews. Crash reporting captures crashes automatically with full context, and it has one of the best cost-to-value ratios of any tooling you can add.

Quick answer: Almost certainly yes. Without crash reporting you only learn about crashes when players bother to tell you, which most won't, so you're blind to the issues hurting you most. It's the single highest-value thing most games are missing.

"Do I need crash reporting?" is one of the easier decisions in this series, because the cost of not having it is so high. Crashes are the worst thing players experience, and without reporting you can't even see them. For almost any released game, the answer is a clear yes.

Crashes Are Invisible Without It

Here's the problem crash reporting solves: when your game crashes on a player's device, you don't find out, unless they take the time to write you a detailed report, which the vast majority never do. They just quit, maybe leave a bad review, and you never know why. You're blind to your worst issues.

Crash reporting closes that gap by capturing crashes automatically, with the stack trace, device, and version, so you see them whether or not the player says anything. Bugnet does exactly this: crashes are captured from the field the moment they happen, no player effort required.

It's the Highest-Value Thing Most Games Lack

Of all the tooling decisions in this series, crash reporting has perhaps the best cost-to-value ratio. Crashes drive negative reviews and churn more than almost anything, and a small amount of setup turns total blindness into a clear, ranked view of what's crashing and for how many players.

Bugnet groups crashes by signature and ranks them by affected players, so you immediately see that, say, three crashes cause most of your problem. Fixing those few is high-leverage, but only possible if you're capturing them in the first place.

The Rare Cases You Might Skip It

Honestly, there are edge cases: a tiny prototype with no players, or a game so simple and stable it essentially can't crash. If literally no one is playing yet, you can defer it. But the bar is low, the moment real players exist, the case for crash reporting is overwhelming.

And setting it up before launch means you're not scrambling to add it during a crisis. With Bugnet you can have crash capture live before your first player arrives, so you're never blind when it matters. For nearly every game, yes, you need crash reporting.

Yes, for almost any released game. Without crash reporting you're blind to your worst issues, since most players never report crashes. It's the highest-value tool most games lack.