Okay so I have figured out that the issue is related to the google play games plugin. Somehow the plugin is causing crashing of the main surface.
This did not occur when minify was turned on (there is a conflict with google play games plugin and minify as it removes it). I then turned off minify and removed my google play games manager and the issue went away. Anyone using google play games services running 2018.2 will likely run into this issue. Be on the lookout.
I’ll move this conversation to the GitHub for the plugin.