The Last of Us Part I finally released on PC on Tuesday, March 28th, and it’s already been bombarded with negative Steam reviews. At the time of writing, the game has a positive rating of 33 percent, mainly due to the broken state in which it was released. Since its launch, there have been multiple reports regarding performance issues, ranging from hard crashes, stuttering, poor optimization, and long loading times. Developer Naughty Dog remade 2013’s Magnum Opus for PS5 last year and originally planned to port it to PC on March 3. However, it was pushed back to March 28, in light of ensuring the game would debut in “the best possible shape”. Unfortunately, things don’t seem to be going according to plan.
In a tweet, Naughty Dog confirmed that it is “actively investigating” the issues. We will continue to update you, but our team prioritizes updates and will address issues in upcoming patches. Prior to its release, media and content creators were apparently not provided with a press release for The Last of Us Part I PC, which was unusual for Sony, which was constantly sending out review codes days – sometimes weeks in advance.
This time around, developer Iron Galaxy has been given the task of porting the game to PC — the same group that was responsible for the disappointing Batman: Arkham Knight port for PC back in 2015. While it did a decent enough job with Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves, Taking over in 2022, the port of TLOU appears to have moved quickly.
PC system requirements and features are revealed in the latest part of the United States
The Last of Us Part I players on PC: We’ve heard your concerns, and our team is actively investigating many of the issues you’ve reported.
We will continue to update you, but our team prioritizes updates and will address issues in upcoming patches.
– Naughty Dog (Naughty_Dog) March 28, 2023
Gadgets 360 can confirm player reports regarding the game’s “Shader Building” process, which in addition to being time consuming, was causing random freezes. The Last of Us Part I’s PC settings lean more towards CPU usage resulting in subtle stutters, while the graphics memory easily reaches its max on medium settings. Players have also reported game crashes during main menu slowdowns while waiting for shaders to form, as well as encountering loading screens during in-game cuts.
“Pre-purchased and pre-loaded. Release it as soon as it’s ready. I went to settings. Turns out this game takes up nearly 10GB of VRAM at 1440p max settings (the game set the settings to max), one Steam user wrote. I’m running an RTX 3080 Ti with 12GB of VRAM, mind you. Never get past the menu screen that always crashes when the game displays a notification in the bottom right corner that reads “BUILDING SHADERS”.
Players on the Steam Deck have been reporting issues as well – claiming that the shaders take at least an hour to build, while running at 30fps on low and medium graphics settings. Keep in mind that Steam only allows 2 hours of playtime, before that you can request a refund. Poor game optimization has been a common problem for PC gamers lately – Gotham Knights and the recently released Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty are two great examples of this, working with small opacity even on the lowest settings. Even Hogwarts Legacy on PC requires a dedicated shader build time on every launch, though the optimization isn’t that bad.
The Last of Us Part I is now available on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store. However, I do not recommend purchasing it until performance patches are released.
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