Bandai Namco apologises for Elden Ring performance issues
Promises patches, suggests updating graphics card drivers.
Elden Ring publisher Bandai Namco has acknowledged various performance problems with the game, and particularly with its PC build.
As Eurogamer reported earlier this morning, Elden Ring currently sits with a "mixed" Steam user rating despite its widespread critical acclaim. Many negative reviews note the game's current visual stutters on PC.
Yesterday, Digital Foundry listed this visual stutter among a number of issues it had uncovered during an early appraisal of the game with its current 1.02 patch applied. More on that below.
Now, Bandai Namco has said sorry for the issues players have faced when playing the highly-anticipated Elden Ring at launch.
"We are currently experiencing some issues that are preventing the game from playing properly under some conditions," a Bandai Namco spokesperson wrote in a blog post.
"We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and ask for your patience."
A list of items "to be revised" in future patches includes issues with mouse sensitivity, and a problem with Easy Anti-Chat "when the Steam account name is set to 2-byte characters". Both will be resolved via a patch in the "near future".
"Regarding the phenomenon of framerate and other performance-related issues during gameplay," Bandai Namco continued, "we will be constantly working to improve the game so that it can be played comfortably on various PC environments and platforms.
"For the PC version, updating your graphics card drivers to the latest version may significantly improve performance."
Lastly, Bandai Namco acknowledged an issue where PS5 game saves were affected if a console was unexpectedly switched off while playing or while in rest mode. This will also be addressed in a patch.
"Until the patch is released, please save your game manually by exiting the game regularly," the publisher advised. "Game data will be saved correctly if you quit the game by opening the system menu using the Option button and selecting 'Quit Game'."
There's no word yet on when these patches may arrive.
Writing yesterday, the Digital Foundry team noted that Elden Ring's PC version had issues "that will affect all hardware configurations on all graphical settings presets", including "severe and distracting frame-time stuttering issues".
"As we have seen with other titles suffering from similar issues such as Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Halo Infinite, it could be sensible to wait for further patches before investing time into the PC version of Elden Ring," Digital Foundry concluded.
Earlier this week, Eurogamer awarded Elden Ring a rare Essential accolade, after playing the game on PlayStation 5. "Grandiose, mysterious, but now a touch more welcoming, Elden Ring tweaks the FromSoft formula to open up its world," Aoife wrote in Eurogamer's Elden Ring review.