onnes

Furry Physicist and Lead Engineer

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pajamaBeeVegan
@pajamaBeeVegan

So 9 days ago I submitted a build for Cow Life Sim RPG to be released on Steam. Their site said to allow 2-3 days for the review, 5 if there's problems, so I thought 10 days before launch would definitely be fine.

3 days later I got the result in the image above. My game failed because it crashes. They said it leaves a crash log, they did not give it to me. They also didn't give me any specs for the machine they tested on or any info at all that would let me try to fix a crash. And best of all, the build ID they said they tested on isn't for my game. It's for someone else's.

At this point I had tested the game on 3 varying Windows PCs, a fresh Linux machine, and even a raspberry pi and it ran fine on all of them. So I tell them I think there was a mixup and ask for another review, and if the game does actually crash to give me the crash log or any info at all so I can try to fix it.

2 days later I got this response from the same person who reviewed it the first time:
Another support message saying the game failed the review process because it crashed

This time the build ID is actually for my game, but apparently it still crashes on launch. They let me know that it crashes outside of Steam too, but still there's no info I can actually use to debug a crash. At this point it has launched fine on 11 Windows PCs, a fresh Linux machine, and a raspberry pi. I have been completely unable to find any machine the game wont run on and have no way to debug their mysterious crash. So I messaged them again begging for any info and/or for maybe someone else to take a second look at it.

It's been 4 days with no response and the game is supposed to launch tomorrow. If anyone knows anything that could help in any way it would be super appreciated. I wasn't expecting my game to make me rich, but I was hoping it would maybe help me pay for March's rent without going further into debt so I'm kind of stressed right now.

Also here's the game, coming out whenever this gets fixed:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2781740/Cow_Life_Sim_RPG/


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in reply to @pajamaBeeVegan's post:

It's been a few years since I last released a game on Steam, so my memory might be a bit wrong, but did you try installing/launching your game through Steam?

Don't know if you can do this, if the build hasn't been approved, but if you can, it could at least maybe help you with figuring what their problem is?

I hope you'll find a way to solve this, because their communication is absolutely insufficient.

They really should give you more information when a build fails, other then "it doesn't run".
Another idea would be to keep submitting the same build until they give you a better explanation is to what the problem might be?

Who knows? :)

I can only assume Windows for the OS since in the first support ticket they blame not testing Linux builds anymore on their "work-from-home status", a thing I am very glad they're doing but Valve's had like 4 years to send their testers Linux machines at this point.