How to Fix “ObjectDB instances leaked at exit” Warnings in Godot

Nodes free with the tree, but plain Objects are manual and RefCounted dies only when references drop to zero — cycles keep both alive, and Godot lists the survivors at exit. Here is how to get to zero.

How to fix it

1. Free what you new

Every MyThing.new() that extends Object (not RefCounted, not Node) needs a matching free() — inventory this small set of classes.

2. Break cycles with weakrefs

Parent↔child object graphs where both sides hold strong references never free; store the back-pointer as weakref(parent).

3. Clear long-lived collections

Autoload dictionaries of sessions, caches, and object pools hold references past scene changes; give each a clear() and call it on exit or level unload.

4. Use the leak list as a worklist

Run with --verbose and read which classes leaked — fix the top class, rerun, repeat until exit is clean.

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 Godot 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.