Bug "level0 is corrupted! Remove it and launch unity again!" Error at launch in Build but not in Editor

Just ran into this bug while trying to test a new build. I'm on Unity 2020.3.13f1. The project launches in the editor, but it crashes on load in the build. The first messsage in Player.log is this:

Code (CSharp):

1. The file 'C:/gamedev/unity/Builds/internal-1.0/monospaced-lovers-internal-1.0-PC/Monospaced Lovers/Monospaced Lovers_Data/level0' is corrupted! Remove it and launch unity again!
2. [Position out of bounds!]

Followed by a huge block of text. It's a bit long to paste here, so I put it on Pastebin

Player.log: https://pastebin.com/g3f1ZkjK
error.log: https://pastebin.com/aX2NVhhJ

Where should I start with this?

I can file a bug report, but I was reluctant to do so because I would have to file it from my main project rather than a dummy project, and the upload would take a while.

 

Well, I filed a bug report on Friday but haven't heard back yet. Hoping they get to this soon, because apparently this error message can mean several different things.

The most common problem seems to be using an #if UNITY_EDITOR on a serialized field, but I double checked for those already. Not sure what else it could be.

 

Thanks, that helped actually.

So I figured out which component is causing it, and it's something from the asset store. I asked the dev, so we'll see what he says.

But it's still puzzling, because that very same component doesn't give any trouble if I add it to a fresh project and hit build. It only breaks my main project. I tried deleting the asset + the .unitypackage and re-importing the whole thing, but no difference. Likewise, I grabbed an old copy of that game object from February from my repo, but the error is the same.

 

As it turned out, Unity QA decided to leave the case open and stop responding. I sent them the project files when they requested it, and they let the files expire twice, so it's clear that they've given up without actually admitting it.

I even asked sales about paid Unity support, and they didn't reply. Turns out other people had the same problem of being ignored by sales, and they finally got to the explanation: https://forum.unity.com/threads/is-unity-premium-support-not-a-real-service.809952/#post-5556640

I already sidestepped the issue by simply not using the component that was corrupted. But I still don't have the faintest idea what went wrong, nor how to fix it. I can probably create a new project and paste in the folders one-by-one to see if that helps (pasting the whole Assets folder into a fresh project did not help).

My only real takeaway here is that it's probably not in any dev's best interest to spend time on bug reports for Unity QA.

 

Sure, I'll DM it because I think those Fogbugz links contain info about past cases too, so it's better if it's not public.

Sorry if I sounded ticked off, but you can understand that it would be frustrating to be met with silence after trying to be cooperative and provide as much detail as possible.

I genuinely would be appreciative if you guys had any feedback, because your educated guess would be more accurate than mine. Even if the feedback is just, "we really don't know what happened here."

I only know what I see in the error logs; Unity's internal build process is a bit of a black box to me.