What causes game over not triggering when lives reach zero?

Your death code decrements lives and then unconditionally respawns the player, checking for game over in a separate event that runs too late or never, so the player respawns even at zero lives.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix Game Over Not Triggering When Lives Hit Zero in GameMaker

Quick answer: On death, decrement lives first, then branch: if lives remain, respawn; otherwise go straight to the game-over room or state without respawning.

A lives system only matters if running out actually ends the run. The bug is almost always that respawn happens before the zero-lives check, so death and respawn are not properly sequenced.

How to fix it

1. Branch immediately after decrement

In the player's death handler do global.lives -= 1; if (global.lives <= 0) { room_goto(rm_gameover); exit; } before any respawn call so a fatal death never reaches the respawn path.

2. Avoid respawning in a separate event

If a Step or Alarm event respawns the player independently, it can fire before the lives check. Centralize death handling in one place so respawn and game-over are mutually exclusive.

3. Reset run state on game over

When you enter the game-over room, reset lives, score, and checkpoint to their starting values so a new run begins clean instead of inheriting the failed run's state.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every GameMaker error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

Reproduce it once with full context and the fix writes itself. The hunt is the expensive part.