Following constant reports of crashing, VRAM drain and “mostly negative” reviews from players on Steam, Naughty Dog has fast-tracked a new update.
Players on Steam quickly ran into some serious issues with the PC version of The Last of Us Part 1 when it first launched. Constant reports of crashing and terrible optimisation from the community meant that Sony and Naughty Dog needed to act quickly so as to not completely eradicate the goodwill they’d built up as a result of the HBO show. Thankfully, a new patch has been released to try and address the most pressing issues.
After addressing the concerns on Twitter yesterday, Naughty Dog has released a hotfix for The Last of Us Part 1 on PC; the details of which it explained in a forum post on its own feedback site. Update v1.0.1.5 “focuses on stability and performance improvements,” it said, alongside other smaller improvements. It then went on to say that they are either “tracking or investigating” other known issues and that the team is closely watching player reports while actively working on another patch that will provide other bug fixes.
For those curious, here are the full – if incredibly brief – patch notes relating to update v1.0.1.5:
- Fixed several performance & hitch related issues impacting some users.
- Note: Additional improvements and investigations based on user feedback are underway.
- Added extra crash diagnostic information to assist in investigating shader building related crashes and other common reported stability issues.
Naughty Dog then made clear that it is currently investigating a collection of known issues with The Last of Us Part 1 PC port, which it explained to be the following:
- Loading shaders takes longer than expected
- Performance and stability is degraded while shaders are loading in the background
- Older graphics drivers leads to instability and/or graphical problems
- Game may be unable to boot despite meeting the minimum system requirements
- A potential memory leak
- Mouse and camera jitter for some players, depending on hardware and display settings
Something to fight for
I feel for PC players right now. Playing through The Last of Us Part 1 on PS5 last year helped me appreciate Naughty Dog’s original game a lot more, and that’s despite me questioning whether or not we needed yet another version of it at all. How wrong I was proven, though. That Steam players are mostly being robbed of having a similar experience is one hell of a bummer.
It’s fortunate, then, that Naughty Dog and PlayStation have been able to jump on this as quickly as they have. Barely 24 hours have gone by and already there’s a patch focused on stability and performance improvements. Some of the images and clips doing the rounds on social media right now are absolutely brutal, so here’s hoping this latest patch will be enough to halt the tide somewhat.
