Crimson Desert’s launch day woes continue as it faces a trio of technical challenges with its release. These, spread across different platforms and storefronts, are resulting in frustrating delays for some players and outright unplayability for others.
The first, and perhaps most impactful for a portion of its PC playerbase, come from a lack of compatibility with Intel Arc Graphics cards. Noticed by fans upon the game’s release, PC gamers attempting to boot the game with one of these installed in their rig are met with an error message which reads: “The graphics device is currently not supported”.
As a result, players have taken themselves to the Crimson Desert FAQ page for more information, finding a section dedicated to the problem. There’s a silver lining to this issue, in that you can at least get a refund if the issue affects you. As the FAQ explains: “No, Crimson Desert currently does not support Intel Arc graphics cards. If you purchased the game expecting Intel Arc support, please refer to the refund policy of the platform where the game was purchased for available options. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.”
What’s peculiar is how players were caught off guard by this lack of Intel Arc support. If there’s a section on the FAQ, why wasn’t this known previously? Well, thanks to the Internet Archive, we can take a look at versions of this FAQ from days before. This FAQ, captured on the 15th March, has no mention of this Intel Arc graphics card incompatibility.
Notably, Intel hasn’t been a leader in graphics cards sales in recent years, in fact it made up just one percent of the total market behind AMD and Nvidia. Perhaps this is why there’s no support, due to the relatively low portion of the playerbase who’d be using one of these cards. Still, to find out why – and why the lack of support was only added at seemingly such a late date – Eurogamer has contacted Pearl Abyss for comment.
Then there’s the Xbox App on PC, which has brought its own issue to Crimson Desert’s launch. Many users who bought the game via the Xbox App found the game just wouldn’t launch, regardless of hardware power or timezone.
“PC really isn’t the master race, I have spent 50 minutes trying to open Crimson Desert and play it lmfao,” wrote Lucky Chappy on X. “Opens right away on console. I now see why no one uses the Xbox app to play games, holy god.” Those who used Steam to buy Crimson Desert haven’t run into this issue, so it appears to be a problem limited to Xbox App users on PC – which, similarly to Intel GPUs, will only make up a small section of the game’s players.
As for why, it turns out the problem may lie in connecting to the internet on the Xbox App version of Crimson Desert. Users have reported that by booting the game without connecting to the internet, waiting for the save data to sync, then reconnecting to the internet, the game runs just fine. Eurogamer bought a copy of Crimson Desert on the Xbox App to verify, and found it indeed would not launch after multiple attempts. We’ve also contacted developer Pearl Abyss for comment on this issue.
Lastly, pulling off the PC platform completely, we land at the Xbox Series X/S. As you may know, there’s a quirk with the Microsoft console that rears its head when a patch or major update is pushed onto a game. Instead of a smaller download like you may expect, sometimes Xbox Series X/S players must redownload the full game all over again when such a patch is put out by developers. This, as you can imagine, can be frustrating.
With the release of Crimson Desert, Pearl Abyss put out a day one patch fixing several issues brought up in reviews, such as fast travel and inventory management problems. For players on PC or PlayStation 5 this came to roughly a 20GB update. For some Xbox users, they were met with a download of over 120GB. So, for those who predownloaded the game, this would have been the second time they’ve sat through this.
“Yay so excited to have a 120GB update,” wrote Cyber Farmer on X. “What’s the purpose in pre installing. So let down. Made sure to leave work on time today so I could play only to have to wait four hours for an update.” Another, who goes by Xbox Nation, clearly an ardent fan of the Microsoft console, was also nonplussed about the whole thing. “Bruh Xbox pre-load for Crimson Desert was pointless! Went to launch the game… Fully updates again with another 120gb. Seriously man”
While not entirely the fault of Crimson Desert nor Pearl Abyss, this process of rolling out chunky patches day one has seeded the earth for this kind of Xbox nightmare. There’s also been another patch rolled out earlier today to the PS5 – so hopefully Xbox Series X/S users don’t have to redownload the entire game again.
So it’s a rough start for Crimson Desert, to say the least. While those playing on Steam or PS5 seem to have dodged the majority of technical hurdles, there’s a decent slice of the community falling foul of these pitfalls. Plus, it’s not as though PS5 players have gotten away scot-free, as many have experienced the game’s performance on their base PS5 and come away disappointed. Steam players too currently have the game rated as Mixed on the storefront (although many have been enamoured with its chunky cats). The controls, likewise, are proving a touch jarring.
Still, there still could be a lot of fun in Crimson Desert if you’ve the taste for it. To get a better idea if it’s for you, why not read Eurogamer’s Crimson Desert review. In it, Lewis Gordon breaks down both pros and cons with Pearl Abyss’s latest release: “The story, broken up into digestible chapters, naturally slows down. The lustre of the ravishing presentation – which shines through even on my aged PC which merely meets the recommended specifications – wears off. But brilliantly barmy moments continue to manifest, even after many tens of hours: at one point, I launched my horse off a gigantic ledge and upon landing, Kliff bounced high into the air, primed to launch an air attack or transform instantaneously into that feathered creature.”
If you do decide to pick up Crimson Desert, Eurogamer has some handy guides for you. This includes how to Synthesize the Abyss Cell for those of you struggling with puzzles, and how to fish in Crimson Desert. There’s also how to upgrade weapons and armour in Crimson Desert – a must-read if you want to take down some of those trickier bosses.
