I'm building an iOS word game (Gramfall) and no production App Store users can see their own scores on any leaderboard, despite Game Center authentication succeeding and no errors being thrown. The same code works correctly in development and all 6 leaderboard submissions fire "Score submitted" notifications on my dev device.
6 leaderboards in App Store Connect (3 Classic all-time, 3 Recurring monthly) and all are Live
Production App Store users: authenticated, scores submitted, no errors — scores never appear
Development build: all 6 submissions confirmed via Settings → Developer → Notify About Score Submissions
Affected users cannot see their own score on the leaderboard from their own device. This rules out privacy/visibility restrictions as a player should always see their own score. This suggests submissions are either silently failing or being accepted but not recorded in the production Game Center environment.
What we have ruled out
Leaderboard ID mismatch (Everything in App Store Connect matches)
Authentication failure (GKLocalPlayer.local.isAuthenticated is true, app shows "Connected")
All 6 leaderboards load with releaseState(rawValue: 1), isHidden: false
Account-level restrictions effectively ruled out as it affects all users, not one account
endGame() fires correctly, confirmed in dev
Questions
Is there a known difference in how GKLeaderboard.submitScore behaves between the sandbox and production Game Center environments that could cause silent failures?
Is there any way for a submission to return no error yet still not be recorded in production?
Code
func submitGameResult(timeSeconds: Int, score: Int, longestWordLength: Int) {
guard GKLocalPlayer.local.isAuthenticated else { return }
Task {
do {
try await GKLeaderboard.submitScore(timeSeconds, context: 0,
player: GKLocalPlayer.local,
leaderboardIDs: ["gramfall.lb.time", "gramfall.lb.time.monthly"])
try await GKLeaderboard.submitScore(score, context: 0,
player: GKLocalPlayer.local,
leaderboardIDs: ["gramfall.lb.score", "gramfall.lb.score.monthly"])
try await GKLeaderboard.submitScore(longestWordLength, context: 0,
player: GKLocalPlayer.local,
leaderboardIDs: ["gramfall.lb.longestword", "gramfall.lb.longestword.monthly"])
} catch {
print("[GameCenter] submitGameResult failed: \(error)")
}
}
}