A frustrating The Finals crashing on startup bug is stopping many players from entering the game. This launch error tends to impact PC players more, particularly on Steam, than those on PS5 or Xbox Series X|S. Upon trying to hit the play button for The Finals, which is in a beta playtest at the time of writing, users find that the game will either crash or won’t even start up. There are a lot of reasons why this might be happening, but there’s particular issue that may impact some players more than others. Here’s how to fix launch problems with The Finals.
How to fix The Finals crashing on startup bug
The main fix to the crashing on startup bug for The Finals is to start the game using DirectX 11 instead of DirectX 12 through Steam’s launch options.
For specific instructions, you need to right-click The Finals or The Finals playtest in your Steam library. Then hit Properties and under the General section, there is a field called Launch Options. In this box, type in “-d3d11” so that the game launches using DirectX 11. The only issue with this solution is that using DirectX 11 may lower the general performance and framerate.
If this doesn’t work, you can try the usual solutions like verifying the game files, making sure your drivers are up to date, and re-installing the game. However, going through several threads on The Finals Reddit and the official Steam discussion forums for the game report that these usual solutions have a low rate of success.
The reason why DirectX 11 seems to help here is because DirectX 12 and Unreal Engine 5 sometimes conflicts with some Intel chipsets. These compatibility issues occasionally cause problems that have nothing to do with the game itself.
For more The Finals beta guides, here’s how to get out of being stuck in the queue and how to get out of being stuck in character creation.
