This behavior is explained in several recent Stern Game Code update READMEs:

- Added Maintenance Reboot support. The game will automatically reboot if it has
been on for more than 48 hours and has been idle for at least 15
minutes. A 15 second notification display will be presented and can be
postponed by pressing both flipper buttons, inserting a coin/bill, or starting a game.

I did not realize this.Thanks for the post.

Why does the game even need to reboot at all?

This looks like a bullshit excuse to a solvable problem.

My guess as an untrained spectator. There’s probably an issue with the game code, something that can accumulate over time, hence the 48hr time period.

Probably a memory issue. A value being written into the wrong spot on the memory table. Or a value overflowing into a space that it shouldn’t be.

It’s probably something like the kill screen in Pac-Man. Play for to long and a value will mess with game data and brick the game. You have to turn it off to reset the memory.

Shame on you stern. Shame.

Shutting off a game every 48hrs to “fix” a problem is not fixing it at all.

Reminds me of the loop issue on game of thrones. Instead of fixing the issue, they disable the feature.

My question would be is there somewhere in the adjustments you could turn the reboot off.

Spike is linux based, which has been bastardized so much over the years the bugs are worse than windows imho. Not sure i would be laying the blame on stern if they are using a specific verson of linux that is not entirey stable.

Not sure that you'd want to, if I recall, they added the reboot to solve an issue where if games were left on continuously for a period of days lockups would occur.

Disagree. Automatically rebooting fixes the problem of the machine randomly locking up just fine. The solution probably had the benefit of being very quick to implement which is critical when you have customers complaining about an issue, at least in my experience.

Optimally you then go back and spend the time tracking down where the resource leak or whatever is happening and address it. Not sure if/where that is on the list of Stern's priorities, but unless a lot of operators are complaining about the auto reboot my guess would be not very high. Tracking down a slow memory/resource leak can be little to no fun, especially if, as earetz mentions, it is possible it could be in the OS or in some driver that they didn't write the code for.