An Empirical Analysis of Compatibility Issues for Industrial Mobile Games

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.