Naughty Dog has responded to the overwhelming number of players for The Last of Us Part 1 PC port who are experiencing crashing and freezing issues. The developer is “actively investigating” multiple problems reported by users, though it sounds like these issues will be just some of the many things that Naughty Dog and Iron Galaxy will be working on for future updates and patches.
Sony blamed for choosing Iron Galaxy instead of Nixxes for this PC port
At the time of this writing, the average user review rating for The Last of Us Part 1 on Steam is at a dismal “mostly negative” ranking, with only 33 percent of the over 3,000 reviews recommending it.
Pouring through some of the “most helpful” user reviews, they report multiple crashes at about once every 20 minutes (sometimes even more frequent than that), a huge amount of VRAM usage, long loading times, and a general lack of optimization. Many have been stuck with the game building shaders for hours. One user on Twitter has had the game crash his Steam Deck and his “fully spec’d gaming PC” even after redownloading and reinstalling the game.
In the reviews, much of the blame has been pointed at Iron Galaxy Studios and at Sony for choosing that studio over Nixxes Software for this PC port.
Naughty Dog, as indicated by the tweet above, is aware of the issues, though it sounds like they are prioritizing updates and will address the crashing issues in upcoming patches. The developer asks players to monitor its support pages and to submit tickets for any issues on Naughty Dog’s official website here.
This PC port for The Last of Us Part 1 was delayed in February, perhaps foreshadowing these crashing issues with the game