How do I know if my game is ready to launch?

Check your stability, your testing coverage, your monitoring readiness, and your early experience. Signs you're NOT ready include: a high crash rate, or an unknown one (no crash reporting, so you can't tell how stable the game is, launching blind is itself a sign of unreadiness); not having tested on real varied devices (so you don't know how the game runs on the hardware players use); no crash monitoring set up before launch (so you'll be blind during the highest-risk window); instability in the early experience (crashes or bad performance in the first session every player hits); and unresolved game-breaking bugs (crashes, progression blockers, lost progress). Conversely, you're more ready when you have a low, known crash rate (measured from field data during testing/soft launch), have tested on real varied devices including low-end, have monitoring and alerts set up and live, have a stable early experience, and have resolved the game-breakers. To assess readiness, capture crashes from the field during testing and any soft launch (to know your crash rate and what's still breaking), and ensure monitoring is set up before launch. If your crash rate is high or unknown, you haven't tested real devices, monitoring isn't set up, the early experience is unstable, or game-breakers remain, your game isn't ready to launch. Launch exposes your game to the most players at once, so launching with these gaps risks a bad launch that's hard to recover from, making it worth addressing these readiness signs before you launch, especially knowing your stability (via crash reporting), having monitoring live, and ensuring a stable early experience.

Should I launch my game if it still has bugs?

Every game launches with some bugs (you can't fix everything, and chasing zero bugs delays launch indefinitely), so the question isn't whether bugs remain but whether the important ones, the high-impact crashes, game-breakers, and early-experience problems, are resolved, and whether you're set up to catch and handle the rest fast. You should resolve the game-breaking bugs before launch: crashes (especially in the early experience every player hits, and on common devices), progression blockers, lost-progress bugs, and other high-impact issues that would hit many players or break the experience, since these do outsized damage at launch scale. Minor bugs (cosmetic issues, rare edge cases, low-impact problems) can ship and be fixed post-launch, they're not worth delaying launch for. So you launch when the high-impact bugs are resolved (not when zero bugs remain), and you're prepared to handle the rest: have crash monitoring and alerts live (to catch the bugs that slip through the instant they happen), a rollback/hotfix plan ready (to respond fast), and the willingness to fix issues quickly post-launch. The key readiness factors are: know your stability (have crash reporting so you know your crash rate and what's breaking, don't launch blind), resolve the high-impact bugs (game-breakers, early-experience crashes, common-device crashes), and be prepared to catch and fix the rest fast (monitoring, rollback, responsiveness). If those are in place, launching with minor bugs remaining is fine, indeed necessary, since waiting for zero bugs means never launching. But launching with unresolved game-breakers, a high or unknown crash rate, or no monitoring is launching unready, risking a bad launch. So yes, launch with (minor) bugs, but only after resolving the high-impact ones and setting up to catch and handle the rest fast, the goal is a game stable enough that launch problems are few and manageable, not a perfectly bug-free game. Capturing crashes during testing/soft launch (to know your stability and find the high-impact bugs to resolve) and having monitoring live (to catch what slips through) are how you reach and confirm that readiness.

What should I do before launching my game?

Test broadly, ensure stability, set up monitoring, and prepare to respond, the readiness steps that turn a risky launch into a manageable one. Test broadly on real varied devices (especially low-end and different OS versions, where launch problems hide), focusing on the early experience every new player hits and the critical paths, and run a regression pass and ideally a bug bash, this catches the launch problems you can before they hit players. Know and ensure your stability: capture crashes from the field during testing and any soft launch so you know your crash rate and what's breaking (don't launch blind), and resolve the high-impact crashes, game-breakers, and early-experience instability, so you launch with a stable game rather than shipping instability to the most players at once. Set up crash monitoring and alerts and confirm they're live before launch (the single most important launch-readiness step), so a problem spiking as players arrive pages you in minutes for a fast response, rather than being discovered hours later from reviews. Prepare a rollback path and a response/communication plan (so you can act fast and communicate honestly if a problem hits). So before launching, you should: test broadly (real devices, early experience, regressions, to catch problems beforehand), ensure stability (know your crash rate via field capture, resolve the high-impact bugs), set up monitoring (live before launch, to catch what slips through fast), and prepare to respond (rollback, response plan). These steps address the launch readiness signs, they ensure you're not launching blind (you know your stability), not launching unstable (high-impact bugs resolved), not launching exposed (monitoring live), and not launching unprepared (rollback and response ready). Because launch exposes your game to the most players and attention at once, with outsized damage from problems, these readiness steps are what protect your launch, the combination of catching problems beforehand (testing), knowing and ensuring stability (field capture, resolving high-impact bugs), catching the rest fast (live monitoring), and being ready to respond (rollback, plan) is what makes a launch go well rather than badly. The most critical, often-overlooked steps are knowing your stability (via crash reporting, so you don't launch blind) and having monitoring live before launch (so you catch problems fast), since launching blind and without monitoring is launching into the highest-risk window with no visibility, which is exactly when you most need it.

Signs Your Game Isn't Ready to Launch

Quick answer: Watch for a high or unknown crash rate, untested real devices, no monitoring set up, an unstable early experience, and unresolved game-breaking bugs. Launching with these gaps risks a bad launch.

Launch is the highest-stakes moment your game faces, so launching before it's ready risks outsized damage. Here are the signs your game isn't ready to launch.

A High or Unknown Crash Rate

A sign is a high crash rate, or worse, an unknown one (you don't have crash reporting, so you can't tell how stable the game is). Launching with a high or unknown crash rate means you're shipping instability or shipping blind, both risky at launch scale, when the most players hit the game at once.

Bugnet captures crashes from the field, so you can know your crash rate before launch. A high or unknown crash rate is a sign you're not ready, and capturing crashes (during testing and any soft launch) is how you know your stability before the big launch, launching blind (no crash reporting) is itself a sign of unreadiness, since you can't tell if the game is stable.

Untested Real Devices and No Monitoring Set Up

Signs include not having tested on real varied devices (so you don't know how the game runs on the hardware players use) and not having crash monitoring set up before launch (so you'll be blind during the highest-risk window). Both are readiness gaps, you should test broadly and have monitoring live before launching.

Bugnet captures crashes from real devices and alerts on spikes, both of which should be in place before launch. Untested real devices and no monitoring set up are signs you're not ready, real-device testing catches launch problems beforehand, and live monitoring catches the rest the instant they happen, so lacking either leaves you exposed at launch.

Instability in the Early Experience and Unresolved Game-Breakers

Signs include instability in the early experience (crashes or bad performance in the first session every player hits) and unresolved game-breaking bugs (crashes, progression blockers, lost progress). Launching with these means every new player may hit them, doing maximum damage at the most visible moment.

Bugnet captures crashes with breadcrumbs and ranks by impact, so early-experience instability and game-breakers are identifiable. Instability in the early experience and unresolved game-breakers are signs you're not ready, since they'll hit the most players at launch (the early experience is universal on launch day), so resolving them before launch is essential to a good launch.

Watch for a high or unknown crash rate, untested real devices, no monitoring set up, an unstable early experience, and unresolved game-breaking bugs. Launching with these gaps risks a bad launch.