How to fix Starfield crashing

The player character and a robot on a wood-filled planet in Starfield.

The player character and a robot on a wood-filled planet in Starfield.
November 7, 2023: Check out what to do if you're experiencing crashes.

Triple-A launches are never plain sailing, so if you've been burdened with Starfield crashing as you try to play through Bethesda's latest game, you aren't alone. An open world game of this size was bound to have some teething issues, so we're here to provide a couple of solutions.

In this guide, we'll give you a few tips on how to fix Starfield crashing, so you can get back to exploring the cosmos. The chances are it'll be a little wait until everything is ironed out, but these tips will help you get a much smoother experience.

For more on the game, check out our Starfield release time countdown. We've also got a look at all difficulty settings in Starfield, plus details on whether there's fall damage.

How do I fix Starfield crashing?

Whether you're diving in on Xbox or PC, there's a chance you'll run into a few crashes when playing Starfield. If that's the case, here's what you need to do.

Verify your game files

This is one for PC players, and is a sure-fire way to resolve performance issues if your version of Starfield is more buggy than you'd expect. This is how you do it:

  • Go onto Steam and select Starfield in your library.
  • Select Properties, then Local Files.
  • Select the Verify Integrity of Game Files option.

This will leave you waiting for a few brief moments as the system double-checks your version of Starfield, hopefully ironing out any kinks that may have impacted performance.

Run on lower settings

Equally, if your PC is having a hard time dealing with Starfield - be it drops in frame rate or overall crashes - you can always lower the settings. This will put less of a burden on your computer, hopefully resulting in improved performance.

Your best bet would be to turn down the graphics settings, starting with texture detail, draw distance, and capping the frame rate and refresh rate. If these Starfield crashes are due to your PC struggling to meet the requirements, this will help.

Check for an update

Of course, if you're playing Starfield on Xbox and still experiencing these sorts of problems, there's sadly not too much that can be done. Consoles are less customisable by nature, so you can't go in and tweak back-end settings to boost performance.

Instead, you'll have to just wait for the Starfield day one patch, which should arrive fairly soon, to sort out problems with the launch build of the game. Failing that, keep an eye on the game's Twitter page, which should highlight known problems and give a timeline on when they'll be resolved.

Until then, there's sadly not much else you can do about Starfield crashing. To tide you by, check out the best weapons to blast away pirates once normal service resumes.