How to Fix a Unity ScriptableObject Runtime Set Keeping Stale Entries Across Play Sessions

ScriptableObject-based runtime sets are great for decoupling, but in the editor their fields survive between Play sessions. Without an explicit reset, the set begins each session with stale members.

How to fix it

1. Reset the set in OnEnable

Clear the runtime set's list in OnEnable so it starts empty every Play session, matching the clean state a fresh build would have.

2. Register and unregister symmetrically

Have members add themselves in OnEnable and remove themselves in OnDisable so the set reflects only currently active objects.

3. Guard against duplicate or null entries

When adding, skip nulls and duplicates, and when reading the set, tolerate the possibility of entries that were destroyed without unregistering.

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 Unity 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.