Death Stranding – Crashing, Won’t Launch or Lags with FPS drops: How to Fix

Death Stranding is an action-based video game that’s developed by Kojima Productions. The game was launched in November 2019 and available for Microsoft Windows & PlayStation 4. Though it has stunning graphics, best in class gameplay with interesting missions, the game for the Windows PC version becomes quite buggy or not stable enough. Plenty of Death Stranding PC players are experiencing crashing, won’t launch or lags with FPS drops issue. Are you one of them? If yes, then check this troubleshooting guide in order to fix it.

Well, we really can’t deny that most of the PC games are quite buggy or unstable enough to play properly for months or years even after getting patch fixes. This is something that most of the players are getting irritated or frustrated when it comes to the crashing or launching issue or performance drops or any kind of glitch or even graphical issues like blurry visuals, black screen, etc. So, if in case, you’re also facing a similar issue, this article is for you.

Before heading over to the possible workarounds below, make sure that you’ve properly updated your Windows OS and GPU Driver to its latest version. Additionally, you can also check if there is any pending update available for the game or client. Once all are running on the latest version, try restarting your PC and run the game again. If the issue still persists, we will recommend you to check for the game’s system requirements below.

Why Does Death Stranding Keep Crashing?

Well, the answer lies within the question. There may be several issues for Death Stranding crashing but here we’ve gathered some of the most commonly happened reasons below.

1. May be your PC configuration is unable to meet the minimum requirements of the game.
2. Internal game files may be missing or corrupted.
3. An outdated graphics driver as well as an outdated Windows OS can also cause this issue.
4. An outdated DirectX version.
5. Background running tasks like overlay apps, game client, etc.
6. Improper graphics settings.

Minimum System Requirements:

• OS: Windows 10
• Processor: Intel Core i5-3470 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: GeForce GTX 1050 3 GB or AMD Radeon RX 560 4 GB
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 80 GB available space
• Sound Card: DirectX compatible

Recommended System Requirements:

• OS: Windows 10
• Processor: Intel Core i7-3770 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB or AMD Radeon RX 590
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 80 GB available space
• Sound Card: DirectX compatible

Death Stranding – Crashing, Won’t Launch or Lags with FPS drops: How to Fix

Now, without wasting any more time, let’s jump into the steps below. Keep in mind that both the Nvidia and AMD graphics drivers are well optimized for the Death Stranding game. So, if in case, you haven’t updated your graphics driver yet, do this first.

1. Update Graphics Drivers

If you’re using the Nvidia graphics card then update the GeForce Experience app on your PC from the Nvidia official site here. But if you’re using the AMD graphics card on your system, then update the latest AMD Drivers from here.

2. Disable Steam Overlay

• Open Steam on your Windows.
• Head over to the Settings > Click on the In-Game option.
• Click on the checkbox to disable “Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game“.
• Once the checkbox mark is removed, click on OK.

3. Adjust Discord Settings

• Launch Discord > Click on User Settings.
• Select Voice & Video from the left sidebar.
• Scroll down a bit and click on the Advanced.
• Next, disable OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco System, Inc.
• Then disable Enable Quality of Service High Packet Priority.
• Now, go to Overlay.
• You can also turn off the in-game overlay.
• Next, head over to Appearance.
• Go to Advanced.
• Disable Hardware Acceleration.
• Once done, restart the system.

4. Adjust Nvidia Control Panel Settings

• Click on Adjust image settings with preview under 3D settings.
• Select Use the advanced 3D image settings.
• Next, launch the Nvidia Control Panel.
• Click on Manage 3D settings > Go to Global Settings.
• Additionally, you can also adjust some of the other options:
  • Disable Image Sharpening
  • Enable Threaded Optimization
  • Use Maximum Performance for Power Management
  • Turn off Low Latency Mode
  • Set Texture Filtering Quality to Performance mode

5. Change AMD Control Panel Settings

• Go to Global Graphics.
  • Turn off Radeon Anti-Lag
  • Turn off Radeon Boost
  • Use Application settings for Anti-Aliasing Mode
  • Set Anti-aliasing Method to Multi-sampling
  • Turn off Morphological Filtering
  • Disable Image Sharpening
  • Turn off Anisotropic Filtering
  • Use Performance mode for Texture Filtering Quality
  • You can also enable Surface Format Optimization
  • AMD Optimization for the Tesselation Mode
  • Wait for V-sync – Turn it off
  • Use AMD optimization for the Shader Cache
  • Disable OpenGL Triple Buffering
  • Turn off Maximum Tesselation Level
  • Set Graphics for the GPU Workload
  • Turn off the Radeon Chill
  • Disable Frame Rate Target Control

6. Verify Death Stranding Game Files via Steam Client

The Death Stranding gamers on Steam can follow the below steps:

• Open the Steam Library by logging into the account.
• You can find the Death Stranding game here.
• Right-click on the game and click on Properties
• Select the Local Files tab
• Then click on Verify Integrity of Game Files
• Wait for the process and then restart the game to check whether the issue has been fixed or not.

7. Uninstall Recent Windows 10 Update

A couple of days ago, Microsoft has released a new update for Windows 10 with KB4535996. So, this particular cumulative update for Windows 10 is quite buggy and causing so many errors or problems.

• Go to Start menu > Click on Settings
• Next, go to Update and Security
• Click on View update history
• Now, if you can see that there is an update having KB4535996 has been already installed. Make sure to uninstall it.
• Here you will see Uninstall updates option on the top of the page.
• Click on it and select the mentioned cumulative update version.
• Right-click on it > Select Uninstall.
• It may take some time to delete that update and your system may restart automatically.
• Have some patience and you can also manually reboot your Windows PC (if required).

8. Remove Temporary Files

• Press Windows key + R on your keyboard to open the RUN program.
• Now, type %temp% and press enter
• You will get a bunch of temporary files on a page.
• Select all files by pressing Ctrl + A on the keyboard.
  Next, press Shift + Delete on the keyboard to remove all the files.
• Some times some of the temporary files can’t be deleted. So, leave them as it is and close it.

9. Set Default CPU and Graphics Speed

As most of the users always want to use ultra-high performance from the CPU and GPU from the very first day. So, most of the users either buy an overclocked version or manually increased the overclocking speed. So, if you’ve also overclocked your GPU speed and after doing that you’re experiencing bottleneck or lagging or crashing related issues, just set it to default mode.

You can also use the MSI Afterburner tool or Zotac firestorm application in order to lower the clocking speed. Once done, you can run the Death Stranding game and check if the problem is fixed or not.

That’s it. We hope this guide was useful to you. You can comment below for any queries.