An Empirical Analysis of Compatibility Issues for Industrial Mobile Games

TL;DR

This study addresses the problem of compatibility issues in mobile games amid platform fragmentation and hardware diversity. It adopts an empirical, dataset-driven approach using four industrial mobile games from NetEase, analyzing 91 well-documented compatibility issues to identify common symptoms, root causes, and fixing strategies. The work reveals three core symptom categories (UI layout, performance, functional) and three root-cause groups (screen customization, computation units, others), with detailed subcategories and practical remediation patterns. The findings offer concrete guidance for developers and researchers, including notch-aware UI design, device-specific shader adjustments, and strategies to support automated testing and debugging in mobile games. An open dataset of bug reports and fixes further facilitates replication and future research in automated compatibility analysis for mobile gaming.

Abstract

Detecting and fixing compatibility issues is critical for mobile game development. The rapid evolution of mobile operating systems and device fragmentation make it challenging for developers to timely address these issues across diverse models. Undetected compatibility problems can severely impact user experience and cause financial loss to companies and players. However, mobile game testing remains highly challenging, and compatibility issues are largely underexplored by the research community. To bridge this gap, we conduct an empirical study on common compatibility issues in commercial mobile games. We select four active and representative games with well-documented bug reports, totaling over seven million lines of code and over 20,000 commits. We build a comprehensive dataset linking bugs and fixes, enabling investigation into prevalent symptoms, root causes, and fixing strategies. Through extensive manual analysis, we categorize the most common symptoms and root causes, and summarize the typical fixes for each category. Our findings provide practical guidance for developers and offer insights to inspire future research on testing and fixing compatibility issues in mobile games.

Figures (11)

• Figure 1: Screenshots of the four investigated mobile games
• Figure 2: A bird view on relationship of issue symptoms, root causes and fixing strategies
• Figure 3: Examples of screen layout issues. (a) Front camera and speaker are blocking the screen title; (b) UI panel overlaps with an information panel, blocking other buttons; (c) Shadow bar fails to cover the top of screen; (d) Background image fails to cover the whole phone screen, leaving black borders on both sides.
• Figure 4: Examples of material issues. (a) Grass material appear as glowing white instead of matte green; (b) Body materials of the character are missing.
• Figure 5: The examples of display issues. (a) Screen corruption; (b) Screen overexposure.