UPDATE 5 (23rd June 2023)

Hey everyone,

It's been a little while since the last post here, and as we've got Update 7.0 coming very soon, it's a good time for a little catch up on how things are going on Switch. 

Since we last posted, we released 6.0 and we've seen another decline in crashes being reported across the board. This update was the first of two with some major fixes and optimisations in place. The second part of these fixes is coming out in Update 7.0, where we have a whole game engine upgrade, as well as more optimisations, and fixes to the Navmesh. The hope is, we're going to see another big decline of the crashes being reported with this upgrade. We've certainly seen serious improvements in our own testing, but it's always a little different when you put it out to so many more people. 

We're really pleased the majority of players are having a smooth playing experience with the 6.0 changes, but we know there are still some people experiencing problems and our team are constantly working on more improvements to make sure everyone can play as intended. Update 7.0 isn't going to the last update with optimisations in, we have some more ideas on how we can improve things further, but the focus right now is getting 7.0 in your hands and taking a look at the data to make sure our changes have had a positive impact! 

As always, thanks so much for your patience. We know it's really frustrating for those of you still experiencing crashes, and we're still working as hard as ever to get things working better for you.

UPDATE 4 (4th April 2023)

Hi everyone,

With Update 5.0 out in the wild, it's time for another update on our progress with the crashes some people are experiencing on Switch. 

We've been monitoring performance on Switch since the previous two updates (4.0 and 5.0) and we're pleased to say there has been a decrease in the amount of out of memory crashes being reported! It's great news, but we know some of you are still experiencing issues which could be caused by the more complicated "30 minute crash". It could potentially still be an out of memory crash but these have become rarer to see). So the work isn't done yet, but we're getting there! 

In update 5.0, we added lots of optimisations for the remaining out of memory crashes, where your game shuts down during long play sessions, or when your campus gets big and busy. So we're pleased to see this has resulted in fewer crashes overall, there are some more optimisations we can do here, and we'll continue to improve this in the vast majority of our future updates. A quick note - this isn't to do with the actual memory you have left on your Switch or SD card, it's memory used while running the game. 

As for what we've called the "30 minute crash", our team have made some really good progress thanks to those of you who've sent your save files in. Update 6.0 (coming out soon!) has the first round of fixes in for this particular issue. This doesn't mean that every instance of it is going to be resolved, but we should see a good reduction in reports, as we have done for the other types of crash in the last few updates. Once we've got 6.0 out, we'll be moving on to more fixes in 7.0 which will be a little further in the future - we need to do lots of testing for these fixes, as we're making changes to the nav system in the game, which can be super risky (but it's ok, let us worry about that!)

We're really pleased to see more players reporting better stability since 5.0, but as some of you have experienced, not everyone is feeling it just yet and we're working hard to fix that. 

Thanks for all your patience so far, and please be sure to tell us about your experience with update 6.0 when it comes out soon (keep an eye out on our social channels for more details!)

UPDATE 3 (20th January 2023)

Hi everyone,

We hope you've all had a lovely new year so far! To kick things off, we wanted to let you all know how we're getting on with the last couple of crashes some players are experiencing on Switch. If you haven't read the last post, please do! There's lots of info in there that relates to what we're talking about today (it's underneath this one in the main post).

Before the holidays we posted to let everyone know we've got a reproduction for one of the few remaining crashes, thanks to Nintendo and some local players letting us test out their saves. This means our QA team have save files they can use to do their testing, and the code team have saves to investigate (it's great news!). Since then we've been getting more saves from players which is helping massively with our investigations (remember, one crash can have several causes, so we need to find them all!). Not only that, but we've also had a lovely person from Unity visit our studio for a couple of weeks to help us track down other causes that are more difficult to pinpoint. 

Together with Unity, we were able to find a very tricky memory leak which we've now fixed internally, we believe this should fix a large chunk of the "out of memory" crashes when your campus gets a bit larger. There were also a couple of other areas we identified as needing some more optimisation, so we've taken care of that as well. Our QA team are in the process of testing these fixes on some of the save files we've received, so we're hoping we'll see some good results. As we've said before though, one update isn't going to fix every single crash - it's very much an ongoing process of constantly improving the game. 

As well as the memory optimisations, we also found the navigation system is causing some crashes for certain, complex levels - these are the crashes some players experience early on in a level (what we've called the "30 minute crash", though it can happen sooner in some cases). We are in the process of some fixes for this, but they will need to come in several different parts as it's a very complex system. We've got to be very careful with the changes around this to avoid breaking navigation entirely, so it's more likely we'll see the first lot of changes come into play in the 5.0 update rather than 4.0. 

We've started the new year as we mean to go on here, with stability being our top priority, as well as ensuring you're all kept up to date as soon as we have more information. We've had some great results from your save files and the Unity visit so far, and our team are working hard to get as many fixes out as fast (and as safely) as possible. You will see more content coming your way soon as well, but that's coming from a different team within the studio - we've got one team on content, and another one stability. 

Once again, we'd like to thank you all for your patience. We know how frustrating it is for those of you experiencing crashes, and our team are working hard to get these last couple fixed. Keep an eye out for the 4.0 update for the first lot of fixes!

UPDATE 2 (8th December 2022)

Hey everyone,

Before the Winter break coming up in a few weeks, we wanted to give you another little update on how we're doing with Switch stability, for those of you experiencing issues. 

As most of you know, there are two main issues we're facing right now - general out of memory crashes which are being improved with each update (this just requires more memory optimisations), and what we've called "the 30 minute crash" where your save file gets into a state where it will crash more frequently, usually within 30 minutes to an hour. The latter issue is rarer to find, but of course, when someone experiences it, it's very frustrating!

Let's start with Update 3.0, the free update coming alongside Space Academy. In this release, we've added more memory optimisations which should help with some of the crashes when your Campus is getting a little bigger, and will hopefully mean longer play times for everyone. As we've said before, these optimisations are an ongoing process, so they're not going to fix every single crash in one fell swoop, but each update will help. 

For the "30 minute crash", we've been working with the lovely folks at Nintendo as well as some players local to our studio, and we're pleased to say we've found a reproduction for it! This doesn't mean it's fixed yet, but it does mean we're very much on track. Now that we know how to reproduce the issue at the studio, our code team can begin to debug the problem and figure out how to fix it. There isn't an ETA on a fix yet, as the process of debugging can take a varying amount of time depending on how many causes of the issue we find and have to fix. As soon as we know more, we'll let you all know.

We'd like to say MASSIVE thank you to the local players who were kind enough to visit and help us track the problem down. Thanks to you, we're a step closer to getting this fixed! Likewise, to the players experiencing crashes, we really appreciate your patience so far - this is still very much our top priority and our team are working hard to get the last remaining stability issues fixed.

We're getting closer!

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UPDATE 1 

Hi everyone,

Wanted to give a bit of an update on Switch stability (especially as this post is quite old now). A lot of what I say here, I've said before in comments to other posts, but it'll be easier for everyone if the information is all in one place.

So since this post, we've added lots of stability fixes in updates 1.4 and 1.5, as well as some smaller bits in hot fixes and update 2.0. The goal for these updates is to see the overall number of crashes reduce, and thankfully it has for the majority of players. However, as some of you are experiencing yourselves there is still some work for us to do.

The way in which we've gone about reducing these crashes, is to take the most commonly reported ones from the data your systems send us and deal with them first. This way, we're always tackling the biggest causes for the majority of players to ensure stability improves over time. We're now at a point where there are a small handful of these crashes left to fix, which is great news, but there's a slight caveat - they're tricky to track down. One of the crashes is an issue that seems to happen on particular save files and causes the game to crash within 30 minutes to an hour of play (give or take). We've got our team investigating why this is happening and as soon as we've found the cause, we can start working on a fix. Of course we'll be doing this as fast as we possibly can, but it will take some time to go from investigation, to fixing, to testing. We're even calling in some extra help with this from the lovely people at Unity and Nintendo so we can track it down faster.

The small number of other crashes we're seeing are what we call "out of memory" issues. This sort of problem is fixed by making lots of smaller optimisations of the game, which we're doing with pretty much every update we release. These issues are more of an on-going process, where memory will continue to improve as each update releases. We have a team working specifically on this as well!

So currently we've got:

- A team tracking down the 30 minute - 1 hour crash
- A team working on optimisations for memory with each update
- A team creating new content for everyone

Stability is very much still our top priority here, which is why we're making sure we always have teams working purely on that. In the background we have our content team working on new experiences for you as well, so everyone will be getting cool new stuff, without sacrificing any time from the people working on stability.

We understand how frustrating it is for those of you experiencing these crashes, and we're doing everything we can to get these final few issues resolved as fast as possible. Thank you all so much for your patience so far!

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(Original Post)

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your bug reports so far, it's helped us hugely in making sure we're focusing our time on the issues affecting you the most! 

We wanted to briefly touch on the subject of crashes, particularly on Nintendo Switch. We are absolutely aware that some players are experiencing stability issues while playing on Switch, we've seen your reports and we are actively working on this as our top priority for Switch players. 

Patch 1.4 is the biggest update for Campus so far, and our hope is that this will resolve a number of the stability issues some of you are experiencing. The important thing to note here though, is that this is an ongoing process. Stability will continue to be our number 1 priority for all of our future updates across all platforms, so you'll hopefully see improvements with every new update.

If you'd like to help us narrow down the crashes you're experiencing, you can turn on an option on your Switch which will send us diagnostic data by doing the following:

1. From the HOME Menu, select System Settings, then System

2. Scroll down to "Send Error Information"

3. Select this option to turn it on

4. You'll then be presented with a confirmation screen where you can select "OK" to confirm

This will then send us diagnostic information about the crash you've experienced, and helps our team figure out what happened.

We know crashes are one of the most frustrating issues you can come across while playing any game, and we really appreciate your patience as we continue to improve things!

Patch 1.4 is currently going through testing for consoles, and will be out as soon as it's ready! Keep an eye out on the Release Notes forum for a heads up when it's live.

Mine was already turned on so hopefully you will see all the crashes I've had/get the information needed from them. There is no error code, it's just software was closed due to an error. It completely shuts the game down and sends you back to switch home screen so hopefully it still sends the error information you are wanting.

Can't even load game now. Just crashes everytime

Just had the latest update yesterday and now the crashing issue is a lot worse. It's crashing every half hour or less.

There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.

There is no error code to report on, there is an error message that says 'The software was closed because an error occurred' then it closes completely and takes you to the main switch screen.

Also, error reporting is switched on in the settings but no error appears there for TPC at any given time.

I came here to say the same as everyone else by the looks of it.

Really disappointed that the crashing was bad when I first download the game (with the first update), now the second update, it's worse.

I'm just surprised the game doesn't appear to be tested thoroughly before releasing, seems pretty bad that people pay £35 for something that causes agro with constant crashing.