Would a local-first bug report tool help Unity playtesting?

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1

I’m building a desktop tool idea called Bug Deck and wanted feedback from Unity developers.

The problem I’m trying to solve is vague playtest feedback. Testers might say things like “it broke,” “the game crashed,” or “I got stuck,” but that usually does not give the developer enough info to fix the problem.

Bug Deck would help testers make clearer bug reports during controlled playtests/QA.

A report could include:

  • game-window screenshot
  • tester notes
  • steps to recreate the bug
  • logs chosen by the developer
  • basic PC specs shown before export
  • severity
  • game version/build version
  • export as Markdown/JSON

For v1, I want it to be local-first and privacy-aware. That means no automatic uploads, no full-desktop screenshots, and no hidden internal game state capture. The tester or developer would review what gets included before sharing the report.

Any deeper Unity-specific info would only come later through an optional developer-controlled plugin/SDK, where the developer chooses exactly what data can be attached.

The goal is not just to make a screenshot tool. The goal is to make bug reports easier, clearer, and more useful for developers.

Would this help your Unity playtesting workflow, or is it unnecessary?

2

Did you check what already exists out there?

Unity has a user reporting tool which provides an ingame report form. And then there’s Cloud Diagnostics.

Your tool doesn’t actually address the problem space: “vague playtest feedback”. It won’t enhance the user’s actual report quality, ie “it not work” will still be a thing, and the features are a small subset of other diagnostics solutions.

In controlled playtests - I assume you mean on premises - the likelihood of terrible quality reports is low to begin with, and where they do occur, it’s a user problem you can’t fix with software.

A local-first tool means the tester needs to install two applications. That adds friction. It also means taking screenshots changes from a trivial one-liner in the app to figuring out how the application actually renders things (ie exclusive fullscreen vs windowed, graphics API, etc) and taking the screenshot accordingly. More friction occurs when the game wants to create situation-dependent report logs (dumps) but your tool may have to tell the game to do so.

Ingame these are trivial tasks, a separate process makes this very complicated and error-prone.

Taking and sending a screenshot together with selected logs is something I expect every tool to have, or at least allow with ease, from within the running game. The player.log already contains the computer specs, versions, and so forth.

I don’t see the privacy-first as valueable nor workable. When you’re a tester of a game you are usually asked to agree to send certain diagnostics data (especially when the test is on-premises), while the final game would usually have a form of opt-out or even make diagnostics opt-in.

Testers are not qualified nor have the time to scan all the report data for potential privacy breaches (or what they consider as such). Since they have to send the report, the only angle you have to remove sensititve information is imperfect automation which leaves both testers and developers uneasy - there’s still no 100% privacy guarantee for testers, while developers know the logs have been altered so they’ll question everything they get.

Your tool may be of interest for companies providing game QA but I expect they already have established workflows, and probably use either some Enterprise software or their own proprietary software.

3

Thanks for your opinion.

i clearly need to do a deeper check on competitors especially around unity user reporting and cloud diagnostics like you said but based on what you said, i agree that a separate desktop app might be the wrong approach from unity

My reasoning is that Bug Deck would need to be more than a “screenshot” + “logs” + "export. It would need to focus on the weaker workflows and tools that don’t already have a strong reporting or report quality through better prompts, repro steps, etc