Why aren't local logs enough for diagnosing crashes?

Because you usually can't get them. A local log on a player's device, however detailed, is invisible to you unless the player locates the file and sends it, which the vast majority never do. So local logs leave you blind to crashes in practice, relying on players to retrieve and send files rarely works. Remote crash reporting solves this by automatically sending crashes to you with context, giving you visibility across all players without asking.

Should I use local logs or remote crash reporting?

Use remote crash reporting as your primary window into crashes, it gives automatic visibility across all players with full context, solving local logs' fatal flaw of inaccessibility. Local logs can complement it as occasional supplementary detail when you do get one, but they can't be your main visibility because you usually can't retrieve them from players. For actually seeing and fixing what's crashing your game at scale, remote reporting wins decisively.

Local Logs vs Remote Crash Reporting

Quick answer: Local logs are recorded on the player's device, useful if you can get them, but most players never send them. Remote crash reporting automatically sends crashes to you with context, so you see them without asking.

Local logs and remote crash reporting both record what goes wrong, but they differ critically in whether you can actually see the data. That difference determines their real usefulness. Here's the comparison.

What Local Logs Offer

Local logs are records written on the player's device, detailing what happened, errors, state, events. They can be deep and detailed, and if you can get them, they're useful for diagnosis. They're simple to produce: your game just writes to a log file on the device.

The fatal weakness is access: a log on a player's device is invisible to you unless the player finds it and sends it, which the vast majority never do. So local logs, however detailed, leave you blind in practice, you're relying on players to retrieve and send files, which rarely happens.

What Remote Crash Reporting Offers

Remote crash reporting automatically sends crashes from the player's device to you, with the stack trace, device, and version context, the moment they happen. The key advantage is access: you see crashes without asking the player for anything, across your whole player base, because the reporting is automatic.

Bugnet is remote crash reporting: crashes are captured from the field automatically, grouped, and ranked, so you have visibility into what's actually crashing. Remote reporting solves local logs' fatal flaw, you get the data without depending on players to send it, which is what makes it actually useful at scale.

Why Remote Reporting Wins for Visibility

The decisive difference is visibility. Local logs can be detailed, but if you can't get them, they don't help, and you usually can't. Remote crash reporting gives you automatic visibility into crashes across all players, which is the whole point of monitoring. For seeing what's wrong, remote reporting wins decisively.

Bugnet provides that automatic remote visibility with full context and grouping. Local logs can still complement it, when you do get a log, it adds detail, but they can't be your primary visibility. So use remote crash reporting as your window into crashes (automatic, across all players), with local logs as occasional supplementary detail, since visibility is what makes crash data useful.

Local logs are detailed but invisible unless players send them (which they rarely do); remote crash reporting automatically sends crashes with context, so you see them across all players. Remote reporting wins for visibility.