The Last of Us Part 1 is out on PC, but users are reporting a glitchy, crash-laden experience. Naughty Dog is “actively investigating.”
If you want a quick, visual summary of just how botched the port of an otherwise beloved game can be, look no further than Kyle Campbell’s recent tweet, which show a forlorn, weirdly hirsute Joel gazing back from what looks like the PlayStation 2 era. Poor bloke looks more like Bob Carolgees.
Admittedly, the screenshot is said to be taken from The Last of Us Part 1 running on a Steam Deck, but PC users of all stripes have been reporting problems with the port since it launched a scant few hours ago.
Joel Last of Us on Steam Deck is SENDING me pic.twitter.com/TUq1F0zPEa
— Kyle Campbell (@Levit0) March 29, 2023
Over on Steam, the negative reviews and reports of performance issues are already stacking up, with 6,323 posts and an overall verdict of “Mostly Negative” at the time of writing.
Here’s a quick sample:
“Crashes every 20 minutes. Game is badly optimised. Game looks great just needs to be better optimised.”
“Wow this runs like crap.”
“I waited for almost 2.5 hours for the game to build shaders while crashing in the main menu every 5 or so minutes – one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve had with a game.”
…and so on. If I were a developer at Naughty Dog, or Iron Galaxy, the studio responsible for the PC port, I’d be feeling a bit hot under the collar right now.
For its part, Naughty Dog has responded to the reports, and writes that “We’ve heard your concerns, and our team is actively investigating multiple issues you’ve reported.”
The Last of Us Part I PC players: we've heard your concerns, and our team is actively investigating multiple issues you've reported.
We will continue to update you, but our team is prioritizing updates and will address issues in upcoming patches.
— Naughty Dog (@Naughty_Dog) March 28, 2023
In a separate tweet, Naughty Dog links to a post on its website’s support pages, listing some of the known issues. These are presently:
- 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
That really is quite a list, and only leaves us wondering how one of the best-known games in Naughty Dog’s portfolio could end up with such a messy port. Needless to say, a patch is being worked on somewhere, by someone, as we type this.
“We are working on patches,” Naughty Dog’s site reads, “will provide updates as they become available, and will continue to investigate other reported issues. Please keep an eye out on our Support Page as well as the Steam store page for our latest patch notes.”
Meanwhile, we’ll be over here, chortling at that image of poor old hairy Joel.
Read more: Intensity and pacing in The Last of Us: Left Behind
