Issues and Solutions

May 5th, 2011.

Inigo sat at his desk, a can of energy drink in one hand, his other hand gripping his mouse as he scrolled through an endless flood of messages. His screen was filled with emails, support tickets, and error logs—an overwhelming sea of problems that had exploded overnight.

The Furious Birds launch had been flawless. The game had spread like wildfire, dominating mobile charts worldwide. But now, the inevitable had happened.

Problems. Big ones.

A notification popped up on his screen:

[URGENT] Furious Birds – Bug Reports (23,487 New)

Inigo exhaled sharply, rubbing his temples.

The game had only been out for a few days, but millions of players meant millions of opportunities for things to go wrong. And they had.

Physics Glitches – Some players reported birds getting stuck mid-air or teleporting across the screen. A rare issue, but one that completely ruined the experience when it happened.

Level Progress Not Saving – A critical problem. Some players found that after closing the game, their progress reset, forcing them to start over.

Broken Microtransactions – Perhaps the worst of all. Some users had paid for the ad-free version, only to find that ads still played. Others had attempted to top up for premium skins, only for their purchases to fail while still being charged.

His email was a war zone:

"I paid for no ads, and I still see ads! FIX THIS OR I'M CHARGEBACKING!!!"

"Level 15 is IMPOSSIBLE because the birds go THROUGH the wood instead of breaking it!"

"I lost all my progress. What the hell, man? This is unacceptable."

"If you don't fix these bugs, I swear I'm done with this game."

Thousands of these messages poured in every hour.

And he was just one guy.

For the past few months, he had done everything alone—design, coding, monetization, marketing. It worked when Flappy Bird was a simple game with a few assets. But Furious Birds was massive. Millions of players, thousands of levels, new mechanics, microtransactions—it was too much.

If he didn't fix this quickly, Furious Birds could crash and burn before it even reached its full potential.

Inigo took a deep breath and forced himself to focus. Not all problems were equal. Some were minor annoyances, while others could completely ruin the experience. He needed to triage the issues—fix the most damaging ones first.

He pulled up his developer dashboard and categorized them:

Game-breaking bugs – Progress not saving, physics breaking, birds getting stuck. These had to go first or people would quit.

Microtransaction failures – If people were getting charged but not receiving their purchases, that was a legal nightmare.

Balance issues – Some levels were nearly impossible due to physics inconsistencies. Frustration was good—unfairness was not.

He cracked his knuckles and opened Unity.

The worst issue was progress not saving. Some players had spent hours clearing levels only to lose everything the next time they opened the game.

After combing through the code, Inigo found the culprit—a simple, stupid mistake.

The game was supposed to store progress in a local save file on the player's device. But on certain Android versions, the system was blocking the write permission without an explicit override.

A single missing line of code had caused chaos.

He added the new line of code.

It was that easy. A single command forced the system to save immediately instead of waiting for an automatic sync.

After testing it five times, he submitted Patch 1.1.1 and pushed it live.

Problem solved.

The next major issue was people paying for premium skins and ad removal—only to not receive what they paid for.

This one wasn't even his fault—it was a server-side failure from Google Play and Apple's App Store. Some transactions were processing correctly, but the receipt validation was failing, causing the game to not recognize the purchase.

He quickly wrote a secondary verification script to check purchase history if the first validation failed. This way, if the game missed the initial confirmation, it could still detect a successful transaction when the user reopened the app.

A quick test.

Boom. It worked.

He sent out a message to all affected players:

"We've fixed the issue! If you were charged but didn't receive your purchase, please restart the game. Your content will be restored automatically. If you still experience issues, contact support, and we'll make it right."

Within minutes, his inbox was flooded with responses:

"IT WORKED! Thank you!"

"I got my premium skin! I take back all the bad things I said."

"You're the GOAT, Dev!"

Crisis averted.

Players hated Level 15. Not because it was difficult, but because it was broken. Some birds passed through wooden planks like ghosts instead of shattering them.

After diving into the game's physics engine, Inigo found the issue—an incorrect hitbox size on some objects. The wooden planks had slightly misaligned collision boundaries, meaning that, under certain conditions, birds could phase through them instead of breaking them.

He adjusted the values, tested it again, and—

CRACK.

The bird smashed through as intended.

He updated the patch notes:

Fixed save data bug.

Resolved microtransaction errors.

Improved physics for more consistent destruction.

Minor UI improvements and bug fixes.

With one final deep breath, he hit Upload Update.

Now, all he could do was wait.

Within one hour, reports started flooding in.

"MY SAVE DATA WORKS!! THANK YOU!!"

"No more ghost birds! The game finally plays right!"

"I got my refund AND my skin. You guys fixed it fast!"

The update worked. The game was stable again.

But the chaos had opened Inigo's eyes.

This wasn't sustainable.

He had barely slept in two days trying to fix everything.

If he wanted Furious Birds to grow, he needed people. Real people. A studio.

The problem is where to find them?

Good thing he already had an idea.

Lead Developer – Someone who could take over patching and maintaining the game's core mechanics.

Server Engineer – A must-have. He needed someone to optimize online services, handle purchases, and ensure data didn't get lost.

QA Testers – He couldn't keep relying on angry players to find bugs. He needed people actively looking for problems before updates went live.

Customer Support – If he never had to manually reply to another microtransaction complaint again, it would be too soon.

Now for the second, the location.

A studio must have an office, and luckily, there is a listing in Makati, the financial hub of the Philippines. If he was going to build a team, he needed a proper workspace.

He stopped at a 1,500-square-foot office in Legazpi Village. It was nothing fancy, but it had fast internet, a meeting room, and enough space for a growing team. The rent was ₱140,000 per month ($3,000 USD)—expensive, but nothing compared to what Furious Birds was making daily.

He picked up his phone and dialed the leasing agent.

"Hello, I'd like to book a viewing for the office space in Legazpi Village. Tomorrow morning."

"Certainly, sir. Are you looking for immediate occupancy?" the agent asked.

"Yes. If everything checks out, I'll sign the lease on the spot."

While waiting for his meeting, Inigo turned his attention into formalizing his company. After all, it was still under him.

"Okay, let's get to work."