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 a Mobile Game Where the Restore Purchases Button Does Nothing

Q: What causes a mobile game where the restore purchases button does nothing?

The restore flow does not query the store's existing entitlements or the completion callback is unhandled, so previously bought non-consumables are never re-granted.

Quick answer: Call the platform restore API (restoreCompletedTransactions on iOS, queryPurchases on Android) and grant entitlements from the returned receipts, handling the empty case.

A player reinstalls, taps Restore Purchases to recover their ad-free upgrade, and nothing happens. The button is wired to a flow that never reads past transactions. Query the store's owned items and re-grant from them.

How to fix it

1. Query owned entitlements

On iOS call the StoreKit restore path; on Android use BillingClient.queryPurchasesAsync for in-app and subscription types, then grant each non-consumable you find.

2. Handle the empty result

Distinguish no purchases to restore from an error and show an appropriate message, so a legitimately new device does not look like a failure.

3. Re-validate receipts

Verify restored receipts the same way as fresh purchases (ideally server-side) before granting, so restore cannot be used to spoof entitlements.

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 mobile 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.

Ship the fix, watch the signature disappear from the next build. That's how you know it's really gone.