What causes garbage from update loops?

Update code allocates each frame — new collections, string operations, LINQ, closures, boxing — feeding the garbage collector until it pauses, causing stutter.

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 Garbage Generation from Update Loops

Quick answer: Profile per-frame allocations, hoist allocations out of the loop, avoid LINQ and string building in hot paths, and reuse buffers and delegates.

Per-frame garbage is hidden allocations in update code. Eliminating them removes GC stutter. Here is how.

How to fix it

1. Profile per-frame allocations

Use the profiler's allocation tracking to find what allocates each frame. The culprits are often non-obvious — a foreach over certain collections, a string concat, a LINQ call. Target the measured allocations.

2. Hoist allocations out of the loop

Move object, array, and collection creation out of Update to one-time setup, and reuse them. Allocating the same temporary every frame is a steady garbage source that the collector eventually pauses to clean up.

3. Avoid LINQ, strings, and boxing in hot paths

LINQ, string concatenation, closures, and boxing value types all allocate. In per-frame code, replace them with manual loops, cached StringBuilders, cached delegates, and generic APIs that do not box.

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.

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