User reported damage to hardware while playing our game - is this possible?

[alecdutch]

Hi,

One of our players reported something very concerning: they said that when they played our game, it blew out the power converter on their laptop (they heard a “pop” and the power converter stopped functioning.) Their warranty covered a replacement charger… so they got a new one, played the game again, and encountered the same issue.

We’re using UE4.27, and our game uses a compute shader to do some pretty cool real-time rendering (we have a character editor that allows 3D rotation of pixel art at runtime.) But after quite a lot of optimization, performance is pretty good when working in the editor- so it doesn’t seem like that’s the only issue.

My question is: is there any possible way that a game should be able to break someone’s PC like this? Or is it more likely that other factors are at play? (Faulty components in the PC itself, wiring in the room, etc.)

This forum suggests the latter (that performance-intensive software can just exacerbate existing issues): https://www.quora.com/Is-it-actually-possible-to-cause-physical-damage-to-your-computers-hardware-by-running-a-game-or-program-that-uses-way-more-CPU-or-GPU-than-it-is-supposed-to-handle

These are the specs for the user’s PC and power converter, in case that’s relevant:

I’m not sure where to start troubleshooting, since we’ve never gotten a report like this before!

This is the game in question, by the way. It’s in beta currently:

[rokenrock]

Yea- as the other post states, you’ll know if it’s possible.
Making a high-level game in unreal won’t cause any hardware issues. Especially not with the power connector.

It’s possible that your game is badly optimized despite you thinking it’s well optimized as you likely have pretty good hardware, but even then it shouldn’t cause issues.

The user may be plugging the cord into a bad power outlet, the laptop may be cheap and not actually meant to be run at full cpu & gpu simultaneously, or the power cord may be something the manufacturer cheaps out on. It doesn’t look particularly high quality.

[jwatte]

Any computer hardware that allows computer software to overload any piece of the computer hardware, has a hardware design bug.
It is totally possible that this laptop has a hardware design bug, and that your game happens to provoke this bug.
If you want to test this theory, add a “slow mode” to your game, where you literally call “SleepEx(15, TRUE)” to sleep 15 milliseconds, after you render each frame in the main loop.
(Or whatever the platform independent sleep wrapper is within Unreal; I forget.)

This will make the frame rate a bit lower, and, more importantly, give the hardware some breathing room so it’s not trying to run at its top capacity. That, in turn, will draw less power, which might let the power supply work without provoking the bug.
You’d presumably make this mode optional, and be possible to turn on from the command line or something.

[High500]

No offense to your user/customer but those mini pcs using laptop style power supplies are terrible. Just because you game pushes their (inadequate) hardware to the limit, does not make you liable.

That is very poor design on behalf of HP by not having some sort of limiter on the hardware or an inadequate 65w power supply running a desktop pc. Yes the TDP of that intel is 35W but when pushed it can exceed that unless its throttled and along with usb devices the rest of the hardware attached memory etc etc its gonna push that 65w.

I do laugh when i see desktops using laptop style power adapters. frankly its absurd.

[alecdutch]

@jwatte @rokenrock @High500 thank you all for the replies last week- I’m really relieved to hear that our game didn’t cause this!

The user had a warranty, so they were able to replace their hardware. We might make a special note about that model somewhere on our store page.

[SenorCarrots (SeñorCarrots)]

Hi @alecdutch
I came across this thread because, even as a veteran pc gamer (been building them since 2011), I seem to be running into a similar issue with a different game. This experience has boggled my mind for sure.

There is a specific game on Roblox that has (seemingly?) caused hardware issues in BOTH my high-end gaming rig, and my sons rig that was previously mine that I handed down to him.

These rigs have completely different components, from different gens. Both of them run nearly any moderate-heavy graphic intensive games.

Not long ago we found a game on Roblox we like, but I will admit, even for a Roblox game it is fairly graphic intensive. Despite that, it doesn’t come close to other games we regularly run on these rigs.

~~The problem:
I began to notice a trend, that, if we played the game continuously for 2-3 hours, frames began to steadily (slowly) drop. Once it starts to drop, it doesn’t stop. It drops 2-4 FPS every 15 mins or so, until it becomes unplayable. I always use temp monitoring software, and even after trying different ones, they all indicate no issues in temp. However, there is an overall “slightly” increasing load on the CPU & GPU. Keep in mind, this is happening exactly the same way on 2 separate rigs, in different rooms of the home.

~~Hardware failure:
A few days ago, after a couple hours of play, boom. My pc crashed. And I don’t mean it have me a BSOD, or even power cycled. Nope… it looked as if someone yanked the power cord out. That’s how the system acted in this “crash”. It wouldn’t turn back on.
After a week of testing and replacing parts:
The MOBO was the culprit, and it was bricked.

Now, on my sons rig, it has crashed (in a normal way) twice while playing this game. Only this game.

~~TLDR;
Vet pc gamer & builder since 2011.
It appears a certain game possibly bricked my MOBO and is damaging hardware on an entirely separate rig. Both custom built. Separate gen hardware & brands. Flawless performance on other games. Also, different rooms (to test possible issues in electrical wiring).

Have you had anymore issues regarding customers playing your game?

I never thought this could happen, but I am starting to believe the structure / design of code in a games graphics / mechanics / physics MIGHT cause issues in the continuous processing of the CPU & GPU.

Any suggestions or help from others is welcome.

Thanks!