How To Fix Steelrising Crashing On PC

Steelrising crashes most often because of overlay software conflicts — particularly MSI Afterburner, Discord overlay, RivaTuner Statistics Server, and NVIDIA GeForce Experience overlay. The game’s DirectX 12 renderer is sensitive to anything that hooks into the GPU pipeline, and disabling these overlays resolves the crash for the majority of players. If you’re seeing a specific “Hardware Device Removed” error with code 0x887A0001 or 0x887A002B, overlay interference is almost certainly the cause.

Spiders released the last major patch for Steelrising in March 2023, so no further bug fixes are coming from the developer. Every fix below comes from community testing and confirmed solutions reported on Steam forums and Reddit as of 2026.

Disable All Overlay Software (Most Common Fix)

This single fix solves Steelrising crashes for the majority of players. Overlay apps inject code into the game’s rendering pipeline, and Steelrising’s DX12 implementation handles this poorly. You need to disable all of them — leaving even one active can still cause crashes.

Disable Steam Overlay:

1. Open Steam and go to Library.
2. Right-click Steelrising and select Properties.
3. In the General tab, uncheck Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game.

Disable NVIDIA GeForce Experience Overlay:

1. Open GeForce Experience.
2. Click the gear icon (Settings) in the top-right corner.
3. Toggle off In-Game Overlay.

Disable Discord Overlay:

1. Open Discord and go to Settings (gear icon).
2. Select Game Overlay from the left menu.
3. Toggle off Enable in-game overlay.

Close MSI Afterburner and RivaTuner:

These are the biggest culprits. Close both applications entirely from the system tray before launching Steelrising — don’t just minimize them. Right-click each icon in the system tray and select Close or Exit. If you have MSI Afterburner set to start with Windows, disable that in its settings under General → Start with Windows.

Disable Xbox Game Bar (Windows 10/11):

1. Open Settings → Gaming → Xbox Game Bar.
2. Toggle it Off.

Disable Windows 11 Game Recording:

If you’re on Windows 11, go to Settings → Gaming → Captures and turn off Record what happened. This background recording feature has been reported to trigger the “Hardware Device Removed” crash during fast travel sequences.

Force DirectX 11 Mode

Steelrising defaults to DirectX 12, which causes crashes on some GPU and driver combinations — especially with older NVIDIA cards and certain AMD Radeon models. Forcing the game to run in DirectX 11 mode bypasses these DX12-specific crashes entirely.

1. Open Steam and go to Library.
2. Right-click Steelrising and select Properties.
3. In the General tab, find Launch Options.
4. Type -dx11 and close the window.

This is particularly effective if you’re getting the “Failed to create the DirectX12 rendering device” error with code 0x800004002, or the “Hardware Device Removed” error with code 0x887A0001. You may notice a slight performance difference, but the stability improvement is worth it.

Update Your GPU Drivers

Outdated GPU drivers are a common cause of Steelrising crashes, especially if you haven’t updated since the game’s 2022 release. The game requires DirectX 12 support by default, and driver updates often include fixes for DX12 stability.

NVIDIA users: Download the latest driver from NVIDIA’s driver page. Select your GPU model and download the Game Ready Driver. Do a clean installation — during the installer, check Perform a clean installation to remove any corrupted driver files.

AMD users: Download the latest driver from AMD’s driver page. Use AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition and select Factory Reset during installation for a clean driver slate.

After updating, restart your PC before launching Steelrising.

Remove GPU Overclocking and Tuning Software

GPU tuning utilities like ASUS GPU Tweak III, EVGA Precision X1, and MSI Afterburner can destabilize Steelrising even when they’re not actively overclocking. One Steam community user confirmed that simply uninstalling ASUS GPU Tweak III resolved persistent crashes that no other fix could solve.

If you’re running any GPU overclocking or monitoring software, try this:

1. Close the application completely (check the system tray).
2. If crashes persist, uninstall the tuning software entirely.
3. Restart your PC and test the game.

If the crashes stop, you can reinstall the software later — just make sure to close it before playing Steelrising.

Verify Game Files

Corrupted or missing game files will cause Steelrising to crash at launch or during specific game events like fast travel or cutscenes.

1. Open Steam and go to Library.
2. Right-click Steelrising and select Properties.
3. Go to the Local Files tab.
4. Click Verify integrity of game files.

Steam will scan every file and automatically redownload anything that’s damaged or missing. This process takes a few minutes depending on your drive speed.

Update DirectX and Visual C++ Redistributables

Steelrising depends on both DirectX 12 and Visual C++ Redistributables. If these are outdated or partially corrupted, the game will crash — sometimes at launch, sometimes mid-gameplay.

Update DirectX:

1. Press Win + R, type dxdiag, and press Enter.
2. Check your DirectX version on the System tab. You need at least DirectX 12.
3. If you need to update, run Windows Update — DirectX updates are delivered through Windows Update on Windows 10 and 11.

Reinstall Visual C++ Redistributables:

1. Download the latest Visual C++ Redistributable packages from Microsoft’s official page.
2. Install both the x64 and x86 versions.
3. Restart your PC.

Run Steelrising as Administrator

Running the game with administrator privileges ensures it has full access to the files and system resources it needs. This fixes crashes caused by permission issues, particularly on systems with strict User Account Control (UAC) settings.

1. Open Steam and go to Library.
2. Right-click Steelrising and select Properties → Local Files → Browse.
3. Find the game’s .exe file in the installation folder.
4. Right-click it and select Properties.
5. Go to the Compatibility tab.
6. Check Run this program as an administrator.
7. Also check Disable fullscreen optimizations.
8. Click Apply, then OK.

Check System Requirements

Steelrising has relatively demanding hardware requirements. If your PC barely meets the minimum specs, you’ll experience crashes during GPU-intensive scenes — particularly boss fights and areas with heavy particle effects.

Spec	Minimum	Recommended
OS	Windows 10 (64-bit)	Windows 10 (64-bit)
CPU	Intel Core i7-3770 / AMD Ryzen 5 1400	Intel Core i7-8700 / AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
RAM	8 GB	16 GB
GPU	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (6 GB)	NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super / RTX 3060 Ti (8 GB)
DirectX	Version 12	Version 12
Storage	67 GB	67 GB

Note that the minimum GPU requirement is an RTX 2060 — this game does not support GTX-series cards well because it relies heavily on DX12 features. If you have a GTX 1000-series or older card, crashes are expected and there’s no reliable workaround beyond the -dx11 launch option mentioned above.

To check your specs, press Win + R, type dxdiag, and press Enter. Compare your Processor, Memory, and Display device against the table above.

Adjust In-Game Graphics Settings

If your hardware meets the minimum requirements but crashes still happen during gameplay (not at launch), lowering graphics settings can reduce GPU load enough to prevent crashes.

For NVIDIA users, open NVIDIA Control Panel → Manage 3D Settings → Program Settings, find Steelrising, and make these changes:

• Power Management Mode: Prefer Maximum Performance
• Threaded Optimization: On
• Texture Filtering – Quality: Performance
• Low Latency Mode: Low
• Max Pre-Rendered Frames: 2
• V-Sync: Off (use in-game V-Sync instead)

For AMD users, open AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition → Gaming → Steelrising and set:

• Anti-Aliasing: Use Application Settings
• Texture Filtering Quality: Performance
• Wait for V-Sync: Off
• Tessellation Mode: Override Application Settings → Off
• Shader Cache: AMD Optimized

Also lower in-game settings: set Shadow Quality and Volumetric Effects to Low first, as these are the most crash-prone settings in Steelrising.

Add Steelrising to Your Antivirus Exclusion List

Antivirus software — especially Windows Defender’s real-time protection — can interfere with Steelrising by scanning game files during loading, which triggers crashes or freezes.

1. Open Settings → Privacy & Security → Windows Security → Virus & Threat Protection.
2. Under Virus & threat protection settings, click Manage settings.
3. Scroll to Exclusions and click Add or remove exclusions.
4. Click Add an exclusion → Folder.
5. Navigate to your Steelrising installation folder (default: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Steelrising).

Also make sure Steelrising is allowed through Windows Firewall:

1. Search for Windows Defender Firewall and open it.
2. Click Allow an app or feature through Windows Defender Firewall.
3. Find Steelrising and check both Private and Public boxes.

Reinstall Steelrising

If none of the fixes above resolve the crashing, a clean reinstall is the last resort. This eliminates any corrupted installation files that file verification might have missed.

1. Open Steam → Library.
2. Right-click Steelrising and select Manage → Uninstall.
3. After uninstallation, navigate to the Steam installation folder and manually delete any remaining Steelrising files in steamapps\common\.
4. Reinstall the game from your Steam Library.
5. Before launching, apply the overlay and compatibility fixes listed above.

When Nothing Works

If Steelrising still crashes after every fix above, the issue may be hardware-related. Steelrising’s DX12 renderer is known to be unstable on certain GPU and motherboard combinations. Consider these final steps:

• Test your GPU stability with a tool like FurMark or 3DMark to rule out a failing graphics card.
• Check your RAM by running Windows Memory Diagnostic (search for mdsched.exe in Start).
• Monitor temperatures during gameplay with HWMonitor — thermal throttling can cause crashes that look like software issues.

Spiders is no longer actively patching Steelrising (last update: March 2023), so community workarounds are the only path forward. The -dx11 launch option combined with disabling all overlays resolves the issue for the vast majority of players.