Okuzeka
Game Development vocabulary · Production, QA & Playtesting

Bug

Meaning in game development, with examples

/bʌɡ/nounCore term

In game development, bug means: A mistake in the game that makes it behave in a way it should not, such as a crash, a character falling through the floor or a quest that cannot be finished.

In Turkish: hata, bug, yazılım hatası

How it is used

You find, report, log, reproduce, fix and close bugs, usually in a bug tracker such as Jira. Bugs are ranked by severity, from a minor visual glitch to a game-breaking or blocker bug. Known bugs are often listed in patch notes.

Example sentences

  1. There's a bug where the player can walk through the wall behind the shop.

  2. We fixed over 200 bugs before submitting the build.

Common collocations

  • fix a bug
  • report a bug
  • game-breaking bug
  • bug tracker
  • known bugs
  • QAShort for quality assurance: testing a game to find, document and check bugs before and after release, and also the team that does this work.
  • crashA serious failure in which the game suddenly stops working and closes or freezes, usually losing the player's unsaved progress.
  • steps to reproduceThe exact list of actions in a bug report that someone else can follow to make the same bug happen again, so developers can see it and fix it.
  • patchAn update released for a game after launch that fixes bugs, improves performance, changes balance or adds small features.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Production, QA & Playtesting

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: