Bugs Overview
You can report bugs for GameMaker IDE issues, in-game problems, the manual, plus GameMaker's official templates/tutorials, prefabs, and extensions. Reports are shown to all users, which generally reduces duplicates and allows us to quickly advise everyone if there are workarounds for urgent issues. This more open communication enables us to much more quickly fix issues and also get quicker confirmation on what a problem is and when we have fixed it.
Your report can be sent via the IDE or here on this website, but we recommend using the IDE in most cases, as it automates a lot of the process and also guarantees any attached files are kept private.
Important
Even if you're chatting directly to a staff member via any form of social media/GMC/Discord you still need to send a full bug report which contains all the information in the report (don't link to any external discussions) and attach any sample project to the issue
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Public bugs live on the same site you're reading this wiki on - note that not all bugs are public, but if they are, then they live here.
To see the actual bug reports, click the Issues tab near the very top of this page:
This will take you to the issues table and shows up to 3 of the pinned "current headline issues" at the top (so check these first!):
And then all the other public bug reports appear lower down the page:
The Open/Closed numbers are buttons you can click to filter the list of results accordingly.
- Open = yet to be fixed
- Closed = a developer thinks they have fixed this now, but note that YOU may not have access to this fix yet, so do see the details in the report for all the info
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Always search for existing reports by typing suitable keywords which relate to your problem into the search bar at the top of the issues page.
You can see that some default text is already typed in for you to say what type of report you're looking for and that it should be open (unfixed) - you usually want to leave this alone and just type your bit on the end. For example, here we type in the words "Sprite Editor" and press the Enter key:
and then you can see we get a filtered list of matches.
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If someone else has already reported your problem, do NOT report it again yourself now. Instead, just open their report and leave a thumbs up to say you have the same issue.
If you think their report is missing valuable information or lacks a sample project that you can provide, then please leave a comment on their existing report with your info - this is always appreciated!
If you feel a report is a duplicate and we haven't spotted this yet you are welcome to submit a comment on the duplicate issue and start your comment with /duplicate, and this will flag it for internal review by the GameMaker team so we can close it accordingly (thanks!)
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Yes, absolutely! On the Help menu inside GameMaker, use the Upload a Bug/Ticket Sample tool to send us your files, then paste the download link this tool gives you as a new comment on the existing report.
Do not create another report just to send us files - there is no need.
You are also able to just add a new comment on the existing report and then drag on a .zip containing your additional files, but we don't really recommend this route, as files sent via this method ARE downloadable by all other users.
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Always make sure that you have updated and confirmed that the latest version of GameMaker still has the problem, as we can't do anything with bug reports for old releases. (Updating your GameMaker install is the first thing our support teams will ask you to do if you do send us an issue referring to an old release, and we will probably just close the bug report.)
LTS users: Install the current Monthly/Beta and check to see if the problem has already been fixed - if it has, do not report your bug. Your LTS legitimately/deliberately may be well behind the other releases and lack changes, so continue using the Monthly/Beta version instead.
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Always check your ui.log for GameMaker in case it tells you roughly what the error is and allows you to confirm whether the problem is not actually a bug (or get more information whether something is a bug or not).
You can find the command to open the log on the Help menu inside GameMaker.
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See our guide on how to fix permissions issues.
Antivirus clients/firewalls/proxy servers/OS account permissions can all deliberately block GameMaker from starting up, downloading your runtimes, accessing the internet and signing-in or download Template files, and often make projects fail to build because files cannot be accessed.
Similarly, if the error commands mention that OneDrive has caused a problem because you chose to install GameMaker inside your OneDrive folder, you can fix this yourself by uninstalling GameMaker and reinstalling to a safe location.
You do not need to report any issues like this to us, as it's just your protection software doing its job and we obviously cannot override it.
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External tools must also match what your version of GameMaker actually requires, otherwise your builds will often fail.
Check the whole of your Output window inside GameMaker (not just the final few lines that said there was an error!) to see if it says more about what/where the error is and then
Always review your tools are correct. See the Required SDKs guide specific to your installed version of GameMaker - you can find these SDK pages on the Home page of this wiki.
If your issue was fixed by changing your console SDKs, Android Studio, Xcode, Spine, etc., install to match what our guide says, then you do not need to send us a report that you had a machine-setup problem.
Tip
If your issue is with importing a sprite/sound/included file, etc., always attach the original source file, otherwise there's very little we can do with your report
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Well, rather than requiring you to create a Helpdesk ticket and us have a back-and-forth asking you to attach files, etc., as we did in the past, this GitHub-based system makes things far quicker and easier for everyone, as now it's simplified to only one quick dialog for you and yet we know all the info we require should get reliably sent that first time.
We also now publicly show the majority of issues and add comments about the progress of these issues onto the reports - which saves us a tremendous amount of time each day responding to lots of tickets about the same problems with identical responses.
This also allows users to help identify the causes for obscure issues or to join in discussions on how a problem might be fixed - resulting in a better outcome for everyone.
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Each morning we triage all the new reports from the day before to determine if each one is an issue we need to investigate further or if we already know the answer and so can close the report sooner. If you have not provided all the info the form requested, we will leave a comment saying so - note that in most cases nothing further will be done with the report until you have supplied the requested information.
Assuming the information is all added properly, the triage team will typically assign the issue to one of the core tech team who is responsible for the GameMaker functionality area mentioned in your report.
At the same time, the issue may be allocated to an upcoming Milestone (a GameMaker release), otherwise it will be sent to the Backlog for further investigation at an unspecified date later on.
When it comes time for them to work on your issue, the core tech team will then investigate the problem by using your sample project to try recreating the issue for themselves. If you supplied logs with a crash/error message, then they may also use this to give them an advantage in knowing where to look in the code. Please note issues may not get detailed updates before/while they're being worked on.
Once the team member has confirmed the issue, they will make an attempted fix and likely use your sample again in order to confirm all now works well for them. At this point, their fix goes into GameMaker and they close the report and leave a comment saying what was changed. This does not mean your GameMaker install suddenly gets the fix - you will need to wait until the next release and then update your install!
Next up, someone in the docs team will review the change which the developer made and will determine if they need to update the manual to match the new/changed behaviour. They may potentially use your sample also in order to confirm they are wording things correctly and that they have understood the change properly.
And finally someone in our QA team will verify the changes made to GameMaker and to the manual which came from your bug are actually correct. They will run your sample to confirm the fix works (and probably check it on more platforms also) and extend your project as they see fit in order to confirm the change didn't accidentally break something unexpected.
Each person mentioned above would typically download a copy of your .zip package for the time period in which they actively work on the problem, but then delete it immediately afterwards.
On the odd occasion in which we claim something is fixed and you find that it is not fixed in the Monthly release it is supposed to have gone into, you are also able to add a comment asking that we reopen the issue and giving us updated info at the same time.
Please do not comment before you know you have a GameMaker release in which we have actually said the bug is fixed!