Client-side crashing at random on all devices within past couple days

Update 17 December 2019: A patch has been released from Roblox at around 03:00 UTC to fix the issue.


Quick summary of the issue:

  • Consistent client-side crash roughly 5-15 minutes after joining.
  • No weird memory usage. Ping remains low up until crash.
  • No errors in client or server log.
  • Error message 277 presented to client.
  • No update made to the game - the issue appeared nearly 30 days since the previous update.

Latest Update: Roblox engineers discovered the issue. It turns out the server does crash due to out-of-memory condition, and that disconnects the client. They confirmed it’s something Roblox will fix. I’ll mark it as Solved once the fix from Roblox is released (Monday at the earliest).


I develop a game called Stepford County Railway with @SCRTeamOfficial (not a devforum member yet) and the game is on his account. We’re on the featured games list from 9th December to 16th December so this bug is causing us a lot of issues at the moment.

We haven’t updated the start place of the universe since mid-November, however in the past couple days we’ve received literally hundreds of reports of client-side crashing on all devices of all shape and size, regardless of graphics settings and available memory.

Without any game update, I can only assume it’s an engine bug, though you might appreciate how difficult it is to isolate the issue. Very easy to replicate though. You don’t even have to drive a train. In a VIP server by yourself, simply waiting around doing literally nothing for 15 mins is enough to crash.


By getting Charlie to join and sit in the game whilst I also joined, we managed to prove there are no errors in neither the client nor the server logs:


Server log as seen from another client.


MemoryOnCrashClient
Client memory usage on the crashed client. Note that this didn’t change at all prior to the crash, and is pretty typical for our game.


Example of the log file during one of these crashes:

REDACTED - don’t upload log files publicly!

Note that everything seems normal for our game until the random 10000ms timeout followed by the error message being shown.

This is a screenshot from the event matching the attached log:

Please note that if you try to test this bug out on the live game, you will encounter a “Roblox had to quit” message as a result of an anti-exploit system trying to kick you while you’re being disconnected. With this system removed you get the error message shown above (277 error), suggesting a disconnect.


Our first reports of this came in 11th December 2019, around 14:00 UTC. I confirmed the bug myself yesterday and the issue is still ongoing.

It’s also worth noting I could not recreate the issue in Studio using Play Solo or Test Server, no matter how long I left it for, yet it consistently occurs in live servers roughly 5-15 minutes after joining. Edit: It is possible to recreate if left long enough. The issue is a memory issue on the server. Depending on your computer’s memory you have to wait a lot longer than a live server would.


If a Roblox engineer needs a copy of the place, let me know. If you need the game owner, Charlie_RBX to authorise anything or confirm anything because it’s on his account, let me know and I’ll get him to email developer relations.

13 Likes

Sent a reply via direct message, thank you for this very detailed report!

10 Likes

I am currently having this same issue for my game. It has started at 11 PM EST Yesterday (11/23/20). Would be a huge help if you could look into this as well, it’s the exact same circumstances as what @BanTech has reported about a year ago.

Here is the game to see the crash in action.

Also no vital changes or anything of the sort was made, it’s the exact same situation.

https://www.roblox.com/games/5028171790/SLUMS?refPageId=d3753414-920a-4242-b57d-3f197609d209

Thanks for the report, the root cause was different than the issue previously, but the client would be disconnected in the same way (this is the way the client generally reacts to any server crash). We have updated a setting that should resolve the issue but it may take some time to propagate.

7 Likes

Sorry for bumping this topic, my game Sunshine Islands Bus Simulator (Sunshine Islands Bus Simulator - Roblox) is currently having the same issue as other game in this topic. There are many players got disconnected after a while in the game.

Unlike other games, I got a update on the start place on 9/2. But I made a poll in my Discord server yesterday and there are about 1/4 players who voted they got the disconnected problem before the update. And so I believe the update on 9/2 just make the disconnected problem more frequent.

On all log files I received, I also notice all log files got 10000ms+ timeout at the end.

Don’t follow my example of uploading logs publicly! I forgot that they can contain private information that you might not want to share, and I’ve edited my original topic to prevent inspiring others. The process for sending logs to engineers is documented here:

Once you’re a Regular, I’d advise not bumping solved topics and instead use the new bug report wizard when creating a new bug report topic.

I will send a reply as a private message

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