[Possible Fix] PC Players crashing after FF Event release

Hey Everyone!

EDIT

An update has been pushed today (11/01/2024) for PC platforms and these crashing issues should be resolved now!

Official update on their Twitter: https://twitter.com/Respawn/status/1745510566951837779

If you are still encountering crashes, then it's likely that you are encountering a different issue.

Please make a new thread in Technical Issues describing your crash if you want to troubleshoot the issue

I've noticed that a lot of players have been creating some posts about this issue.

It seems like there are some issues that causes some players to crash on the PC platform.

This is not an official post or anything, I'm just posting here to share my and the community's findings, so hopefully this'll be of help!

There are currently 2 issues being looked into by Respawn:

• [Trello] | [PC] Crashing with DX12
• [Trello] | [PC] Crashing with older Intel CPUs

It's likely that the crashing that you are experiencing is the one related to older Intel CPU's, though if you are using the DX12 version, I'd highly recommend reading the section related to the DX12 crashes.

Keep in mind that you might also be crashing due to an issue unrelated to this one, so these fixes might not work for you

Crashing with DX12

When the event released, some players were already quick to find an issue with how the DX12 version of the game was being launched.

I'm personally not sure if this issue is causing the crash or if another issue, as I don't really know how this game operates on a file by file basis.

Personally I'd recommend to switch to the DX11 version of the game.

This can be done by getting rid of this launch option: "eac_launcher_settings SettingsDX12.json

(If you never enabled the DX12 mode of the game then you are running the standard DX11 client)

Though if you really want to play on the DX12 version of the game, it might be worth a shot try this:

1. Go to this directory: Apex Legends\EasyAntiCheat\Launcher

2. Open SettingsDX12.json

3. Change the 3rd line "executable" : "r5apex.exe", to: "executable" : "r5apex_dx12.exe",

4. Save the file

Now it might start the DX12 version without crashing, though I've not been able to confirm this yet.

Crashing with older Intel CPUs

It seems like this is the issue that's causing most players to crash.

So far it looks like this is related to the instruction sets that certain CPU models use.

With this event it seems like some content is missing to make the game work properly with some of these CPU models.

So what's the fix?

Well, some newer Intel models can run the AES-NI instruction set (which might be disabled for some users)

You can enable AES-NI in your BIOS Settings, you can follow these steps if you're not sure how to:

1. Open your BIOS (Check your Motherboard manual if you don't know how)
   1. If your BIOS has an advanced tab then you most likely need to navigate there, as the basic UI typically doesn't show this.
2. Go to your CPU Settings (Since every motherboard can vary widely UI-wise, it might be under a different tab. Try looking for something like Main, Devices, Performance, Security)

Keep in mind that older Intel CPU's might not support this, for those that have an Intel CPU that does not support AES-NI will have to wait for Respawn to release a patch, until then they might keep getting these crashes.

(This fix was discovered by: u/Particular-Cod-5766 on Reddit)

I'd recommend to keep AES-NI enabled, even if they bring out a fix for this issue.

From what I'm aware, this instruction set is pretty dope compared what else you'd be running as default.

(Though I don't know much about this, so it might be worth to research a bit more)