Snapshot functions are not working and breaking the play services in my game

[kadam03]

Dear @Iakobs and Fellow Developers,

First of all, thanks a lot for the plugin, I believe You make the work of many of us much easier with it!

TL;DR;
Problem: Snapshot functions do not work and braking the other service functions as well.

Long story: I tried to collect every possible info which might help.
I know its super hard to figure out a strange behvaiour remotely, but let's try.

Context:
I have a simple android mobile game which I would like to distribute via Google Play.
Currently it's in internal testing phase, I have a few players who are testing the new features.

The problem:
The Login and Leaderboard functions are working. Once I call any snapshot related function (PlayGamesSnapshotsClient) the service functions are not working anymore. The game is still running but the service plugin module seems to fail silently.

At the end instead of a JSON file I tried to do simple calls like this:

	var testdata = "asdf".to_utf8_buffer()
	save_client.save_game("savefile", "SaveBouncyPaws", testdata, 1000, 5)

Background infos

Play Console

• Play Games Services enabled (published)
• Saved Games toggle set to ON
• Linked Cloud Project shown in Configuration

Google Cloud Console

• Correct linked project selected, configuration published
• Google Drive API enabled in that project
• Android OAuth 2.0 Client IDs created:
  • Debug SHA-1, package name → works (sign-in ok).
  • Test build SHA-1, package name → works (sign-in ok).
  • Release SHA-1, package name → works (sign-in ok).

Authentication

• Sign-in works reliably
• Leaderboards work (submit + load)
• Granted OAuth scopes in logcat include:
  • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/games_lite
  • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.appdata

Test Environment

• Tested both on emulator and on a physical Android device
• Same failure occurs on both
• Game built with Godot 4.4.1

Technical investigation:

• Any call to save_game(file_name, description, PackedByteArray, played_time_millis, progress_value):
  • After the call, no further Play Games Services API calls work (leaderboards/sign-in break too)
  • No game_saved signal is emitted in Godot
  • No Drive API traffic appears in Cloud Console (no drive.files.create/update calls)
• This happens even when saving a trivial PackedByteArray of just 4 bytes ("asdf".to_utf8_buffer())
• findings in the adb logs:
  • it is visible that the plugin initializes the save
    • D SnapshotsProxy: Saving game data with name savefile and description SaveBouncyPaws.
  • immediately followed by:
    • W ActivityManager: Unable to start service Intent { act=com.google.android.gms.auth.api.signin.RevocationBoundService.clearClientState ... } U=0: not found
  • No GamesNativeSDK: Successfully wrote snapshot ever appears.
  • Eventually see: W GamesService: Sign-in check failed: clientContext ... mGrantedScopes=[https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.appdata, https://www.googleapis.com/auth/games_lite]
  • After this, all Play Games calls silently stop working until restart

Other things which I tried without any success:

• Downloaded your repository and rebuilt the plugin
• Updated to the latest Android studio to build the plugin, latest SDK-s, latest Gradle support, target SDK v35
• Different keystore configs and different OAuth client, all of them working for leaderboards but not for snapshots
• Tried several type of data, also followed the sample code in Your demo project.
• Went through on Play Console and Cloud configurations tremendous amount of time (drive is enabled for the project, Save Game option is enabled, credentials are correct)
• Sending complete json files and simple texts, tried with different type of arrays
• In some cases the tests running on emulator produced a strange message which said that the message to be transferred is around 1MB, even in case of 4 characters
• Read through the closed issues and all the discussions, but could not find a working solution
  • I've seen Godot version related problems in closed issues, I'm using v4.4.1 with the latest version of this plugin
• Deployed an internal test build via Google Play console with the save mechanism, which gets the Google signature from the console, in the cloud ownership is verified, no success
• Deleted project cache and old build data

Do You have any other suggestion what else can I try?
In there any other information which I can provide?
Is there anything else which I might missed to configure?

Sorry for the huge article,
Thanks a lot for Your reply in advance!

Best regards,
Adam

[Iakobs]

Hi @kadam03 first of all, thanks a lot for your kind words and for reaching out.

I'm so sorry to hear that the snapshot saving feature is not working, you did an excellent job explaining your problem and what you've done so far trying to fix it, it really helps me understand the issue and trying to help you.

That being said, the only thing I can think of is that you don't have enough cloud storage in the user's Google Drive account, which is ultimately where the data is stored.

This is a scenario that I never tested properly, if we can confirm this is the problem maybe I can try to put a saveguard in the code of the plugin so it doesn't make all the other things fail (which is very strange and I apologize, this should never happen at all).

If this is not the origin of the issue, then I'm afraid I'm completely at a loss here, but again, maybe we can figure out a way that at least all other services don't collapse.

Keep me posted and let's see if we figure this out!

[kadam03]

Thanks for your fast reaction, and for caring about my problem @Iakobs!
I've tried many things, but the final solution is ubelievably simple (and I feel silly for not trying it by myself...)!

in the setting of the device, clear the cached data of the Google Play Games app, then do the same with the developed app

After this, just start the game again, and the magic happens! Snapshot functions are working, with every other feature as well.
I found the solution in this random reddit comment, I hope it will help other fellow devs in the future.

Just a thought for improvement, although I'm not sure that this is feasable in the context of the plugin, and how special was my case:

• If the sign-in procedure was successful, and the player is authenticated, BUT
• There is client authentication error during any snapshot function
  ... it could be helpful to add a log message with a hint, to check and clear the profile data. But as I said, by checking the plugin's kotlin code I do not know how would I solve this either.

At the end, your plugin works perfectly, and many thanks for it! 🏅🌟

[Iakobs]

Oh wow,that's good to know! I'm glad you found the solution, have fun with your game!