Why does my game crash with out-of-memory errors on some devices?

Because its memory footprint exceeds what those devices have. A footprint that fits comfortably on your high-memory dev machine can exceed a budget phone's or older device's memory, triggering an OOM crash there while you see nothing. OOM crashes are invisible on your machine and concentrate on lower-memory hardware, so you need crashes captured and tagged by device from the field to see which devices are affected.

How do I fix out-of-memory crashes?

Capture OOM crashes tagged by device to see which hardware hits them, then reduce your memory footprint to fit those devices: unload assets you don't currently need, compress large textures and audio, stream content instead of loading everything up front, and check for a memory leak that grows your footprint over time. Then verify with field data that the crashes stopped on the affected devices. The fix is bringing your resident memory use within the limits of the devices that were crashing.

What Causes Out-of-Memory Crashes?

Q: What causes out-of-memory crashes?

Out-of-memory (OOM) crashes happen when your game tries to use more memory than the device has. The causes are a high memory footprint (loading too much at once), memory leaks (memory never freed, growing over a session until it exceeds the limit), large or uncompressed assets like textures and audio, not unloading data you no longer need, and memory spikes (a sudden surge that briefly exceeds available memory). When the total exceeds the device's RAM, the OS kills the game.

Quick answer: Out-of-memory crashes happen when your game uses more memory than the device has, from a high footprint (loading too much), memory leaks (memory never freed), or large assets, especially on lower-memory devices.

An out-of-memory (OOM) crash happens when your game asks for memory the device doesn't have. They're common on lower-memory devices you don't test on, so they're easy to miss. Here's what causes out-of-memory crashes and why they hit some players and not you.

Why a Game Runs Out of Memory

OOM crashes come down to your game's memory footprint exceeding the device's available memory. A few patterns drive that.

A high memory footprint, loading too much into memory at once (all levels, all assets up front) instead of only what's needed
Memory leaks, memory allocated and never freed, so usage grows over a session until it exceeds the limit
Large assets, uncompressed or high-resolution textures and audio that consume far more memory than necessary
Not unloading, holding onto assets and data you no longer need
Memory spikes, a sudden surge (loading a big level, spawning many objects) that briefly exceeds available memory

When the total exceeds what the device has, the OS kills the game, an out-of-memory crash. The cause is using more than is available, whether steadily or in a spike.

Why They Hit Lower-Memory Devices

OOM crashes are invisible on your high-memory dev machine, they only happen on devices with less RAM than your game needs. A footprint that fits comfortably on your machine can exceed a budget phone's memory, crashing it while you see nothing.

Bugnet captures memory-related crashes tagged by device, so OOM crashes on lower-memory hardware surface in your data. This is the only way to see a problem affecting a segment of players you'd never notice from your own testing, where memory is plentiful.

Finding and Fixing the Cause

To address OOM crashes, you need to know which devices hit them and what's consuming the memory. Capturing the crashes by device shows you the affected hardware; then reducing your footprint (unloading what isn't needed, compressing assets, streaming instead of loading all at once) and checking for leaks brings usage within limits.

Bugnet shows which devices hit out-of-memory crashes and helps you confirm fixes worked. So out-of-memory crashes are caused by exceeding available memory, through footprint, leaks, or large assets, and finding the cause means capturing them by device and reducing what you hold resident.

OOM crashes happen when your game uses more memory than the device has, from a high footprint, leaks, or large assets. They hit lower-memory devices you don't test, so capture them by device.