How to Fix Performance Problems from Reflection and Boxing

Reflection and boxing are hidden performance costs in hot code. Avoiding them fixes it. Here is how.

How to fix it

1. Avoid or cache reflection

Reflection lookups are slow and allocate. Do them once at startup and cache the results (delegates, member info), rather than reflecting every frame. Better, avoid reflection in hot paths entirely.

2. Prevent boxing

Passing a value type (int, struct, enum) where an object is expected boxes it onto the heap, allocating. Use generics and typed APIs, avoid object-typed collections for value types, and watch enum-keyed dictionaries.

3. Profile GC allocations

The profiler's allocation column reveals boxing and reflection allocations you did not expect. Find the per-frame allocations and eliminate the boxing and reflection behind them to cut GC pressure.

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 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.