Naughty Dog has released the third The Last of Us hotfix for the fumbled PC release ahead of a bigger patch arriving on Friday
Sony’s first chance to bring critical darling The Last of Us to players outside of the PlayStation ecosystem has gone down like a lead balloon. So far, Naughty Dog’s in-house port of last year's PS5 remake The Last of Us Part 1 has suffered from countless bugs including crashes, performance issues, and maxing out of RAM. While Naughty Dog was quick to release a fix, problems persist. The situation has gotten so bad that Steam has been accepting refunds for the game outside of its usual two-hour window.
Another patch is heading our way this Friday, but in the interim Naughty Dog has released a hotfix, taking to Twitter to post The Last of Us 1.0.1.7 hotfix patch notes which lists fixes targeting the game's countless crashing bugs – something we experienced first hand in our Mirror Gaming stream last week.
The crashing problems specifically targeted include one that occurred when toggling between fullscreen and windowed modes, a memory crash that would occur at the end of the game before the credits, and worst of all, a crash that happen upon launching the game. Also included was a GeForce driver hotfix directly from Nvidia that addresses problems PC gamers with an RTX 30 series graphics cards have been running into.
However, Naughty Dog doesn't expect this hotfix to completely put an end to all instances of crashing as it has also included "additional crash report logs to provide further insight for developers", which should hopefully aid the developer in the creation of future patches to get the port to where it needs to be.
In spite of The Last of Us hotfix aiming to target crashes for the most part, a few players aren't having any luck. One person posted on the r/pcgaming subreddit, saying that they had taken the advice and updated their Nvidia drivers only for the game to still crash. While another user responding to Naughty Dog's original tweet said that they're still having crashing issues even on the main menu screen.
Cordy-missteps
Even with this latest hotfix, the pc port of The Last of Us Part 1 still has a long way to go, as several other issues still plague the game. The Last of Us 1.0.1.7 hotfix doesn't fix camera jitters for players using mouse controls. The studio explained in a follow-up tweet that the patch for this has been pushed back to a future date due to 'unexpected issues' that arose when it was attempting to sort it out. As frustrating as this is, it's for the best considering the last thing the PC port needs is more problems.
It's especially bad since this issue was also flagged on reddit when Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection came to PC. This port was handled by Iron Galaxy – who also worked with Naughty Dog on this PC port of The Last of Us Part 1. This still hasn't been properly addressed in Uncharted in the six months since it launched on PC, with someone on Twitter saying they're still running into it as of just a few days ago. So it's understandable that some parts of the community are sceptical that it'll be fixed at all in The Last of Us, like this player on Twitter.
Mouse controls aside, players in a reddit thread discussing The Last of Us 1.0.1.7 patch notes are still reporting performance issues with the game. However, this should hopefully be addressed in the upcoming patch which Naughty has confirmed will be releasing this Friday, April 7.
When the PC port of The Last of Us was announced, we were excited to play the game on the Steam Deck. The title is technically available on the handheld, but not in a Steam Deck supported version. Given the port barely runs well on top-of-the-line gaming PC's, it's not shocking to hear that the Steam Deck version is not doing well. And Naughty Dog has said that its priorities lie in fixing the PC port, while Steam Deck support is at the bottom of the list for now.
Although it's not a complete write off; in a tweet in the hotfix thread, it said, “Our team is continuing to work toward future improvements and patches, including eventual Steam Deck verification”.
For a team as accomplished as Naughty Dog – whose games frequently push the PlayStation hardware to its limit – it’s disappointing to see its marquee game facing huge issues. Especially when past PlayStation Studios PC Ports like Death Stranding and God Of War were fantastic. At least Naughty Dog’s experience with this port should hopefully make the eventual PC version of The Last Of Us Part 2 better – or we can hope so at least.
