Why are startup crashes so damaging?

Because a player who can't even launch your game has the worst possible first experience, and they're among the least likely to report, they have nothing to describe and may assume the game is simply broken, so they leave a bad review and never return. Startup crashes also tend to be device or config specific, meaning they can affect a whole segment of players invisibly to you.

How do I find the cause of a startup crash?

Look at the stack trace and device context of crashes happening early in the launch sequence. The trace points to where in initialization the crash occurs (config loading, system init, first scene), and the device and OS context reveals which configurations fail, since startup crashes are often hardware or config specific. Grouping occurrences shows the shared pattern across affected players, which usually points straight at the cause.

How Do I Find Out If My Game Crashes on Startup?

Quick answer: Capture crashes from the field, startup crashes are especially likely to go unreported because the player never even gets in. Look for crashes early in the launch sequence, grouped by signature and tagged by device.

Startup crashes are uniquely damaging, a player who can't even launch your game has the worst possible first experience, and they're especially likely to leave a bad review without reporting. Here's how to find out if your game crashes on startup for anyone.

Startup Crashes Are Often Invisible to You

A startup crash works fine on your machine but kills the game for some players before they get in, and those players are the least likely to report, they have nothing to describe and may assume the game is just broken. So startup crashes can be widespread while you remain completely unaware.

Bugnet captures crashes from the field automatically, including ones during startup, so you see them whether or not the player reports. Finding out if your game crashes on startup means capturing crashes in the wild, because your own launches succeeding tells you nothing about players' failing.

Look for Crashes Early in the Launch Sequence

Startup crashes show up as crashes whose stack traces point to early initialization, loading config, initializing systems, loading the first scene. Capturing crashes with stack traces lets you identify the ones happening during startup specifically, and grouping shows how many players each affects.

Bugnet captures stack traces and groups crashes by signature, so startup crashes cluster as identifiable issues with counts. Spotting crashes in the launch sequence is how you confirm a startup crash exists and gauge how many players can't get into your game because of it.

Check the Device and Config Pattern

Startup crashes are frequently device or configuration specific, a missing feature on certain hardware, a corrupted config, an init-order issue on some OS versions. Looking at the device and version context of startup crashes reveals which configurations fail, which is the key to fixing them.

Bugnet tags crashes by device, OS, and version, so a startup crash that only hits certain hardware stands out as a cluster. Finding out if your game crashes on startup is capturing field crashes, spotting the ones during launch, and checking the device pattern, which both confirms the problem and points at the cause.

Capture crashes from the field, startup crashes go unreported since the player never gets in. Look for crashes early in the launch sequence and check the device pattern, they're often config-specific.