Why is Horizon Zero Dawn for PC crashing so much and what can you do?

The Horizon Zero Dawn port from PlayStation 4 to PC has not gone smoothly for players. Many of them have been encountering various graphical issues, texture issues, character hair problems, glitches, bugs, and crashes. While several reviewers praised the return of the 2017 PlayStation title, the PC port has not done it justice. For those who have been running into the issue having their game crash, there’s something you can do, but it’s not a guaranteed fix, and it’s honestly you waiting for the developers to come up with hotfixes for definite solutions.

Some players on Reddit have shared how they first had to update their drivers. Make sure your drivers have all of the recent information installed on them, and all of the updates are ready to go. After that, go to your settings while playing the game and turn off the 16x anisotropic filtering setting. Turning this off appears to work for a handful of players and prevents them from crashing. Mess around with the settings on your side to see if you can’t pull the load off the game to prevent it from collapsing back to your desktop. You can also disable your Steam overlay to see if that helps with your graphical issues.

Beyond messing around with your settings and making sure you do not have any other background applications going, there’s little you can do. Players who have modern PC hardware have run into issues when they shouldn’t. These problems are not a matter of attempting to reinstall the game, but it’s the third-party company plugging in the game correctly to make it a successful port. The problems have not happened to everyone, but those experiencing it have said it’s causing them to have an unplayable experience. The best thing you can do is wait until Guerrilla Games apply some hotfixes and plug up the problems.