Unable to play Carrier Strike, game keeps crashing to desktop

Anyone else crashes to desktop while loadning into Carrier strike? Anyone know a fix?

I can play the new map on other modes, and other maps works fine!

Since update 1.4.2.0 the game crashes to desktop during map load, but only on Wake Island and Top Gun: Carrier Strike. Every other map loads and plays normally.

The crash is a deterministic null pointer dereference inside bf6.exe, not a GPU driver fault. All 10 crashes produce the exact same exception address, faulting offset and accessed address, across different sessions, different graphics settings and a clean reboot.

CRASH SIGNATURE (identical in every dump)

Exception code: 0xC0000005 ACCESS_VIOLATION
Faulting module: bf6.exe+0x5205665
Faulting address: 0x0000000145205665
Access type: READ at 0x00000000000000A7

The accessed address 0xA7 is a null base pointer plus a 167-byte member offset. The code reads a field from an object that was never initialized. The value is constant across all dumps, which rules out memory corruption, since that would produce scattered addresses.

I verified three dumps spanning 67 minutes: 22:26:24, 22:40:42 and 23:33:56 local time (UTC-3). All three are identical in exception code, faulting offset and accessed address.

REPRODUCTION STEPS

1. Launch Battlefield 6 on PC (Steam), game update 1.4.2.0.
2. Queue into Wake Island or Top Gun: Carrier Strike.
3. During the map load, audio stutters for about a second and the game closes to desktop with no error dialog.
4. Load any other map. It loads and plays without issue.

Reproduced 10 out of 10 attempts on the two affected maps. Zero crashes on unaffected maps, including one continuous session of 7 minutes 49 seconds verified by process monitoring.

SYSTEM

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070
GPU driver: 610.88 (WDDM 32.0.16.1088)
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
RAM: 32 GB
OS: Windows 11 Pro 25H2, build 26200
Game build: 1.4.2.0, bf6.exe version 1.0.443.60769, Steam buildid 24745559
Platform: Steam
Displays: 3

CRASH TIMELINE, 2026-08-18 (all times UTC-3)

The update wrote bf6.exe at 20:48:54. First crash at 22:26:20. The game had been stable for months before this update, with only 4 dumps total in the preceding two weeks.

22:26:20 / 22:27:29 / 22:28:58 / 22:30:24 / 22:40:38 / 22:43:24 / 22:52:16 / 22:55:17 / 23:11:09 / 23:33:51

The game writes two dumps per crash, so these are 10 distinct crashes.

TROUBLESHOOTING ALREADY PERFORMED (none of it changed the crash)

- Steam file integrity verification: passes, no files replaced.
- Full PC restart: the crash reproduces afterwards. The 23:11 and 23:33 crashes are post-reboot.
- Game shader cache cleared (Documents\Battlefield 6) and NVIDIA DXCache cleared.
- DLSS Frame Generation disabled.
- Upscaling technique changed.
- PCIe Link State Power Management set to Off.
- EA AntiCheat service and in-game launcher checked: both already on 1.0.14940698.0, no mismatch.

After each of these, the crash reproduces with a byte-identical signature.

WHAT I RULED OUT, WITH EVIDENCE

Not a GPU driver crash or TDR. No LiveKernelEvent was logged on the crash date. The most recent ones are from August 3, August 4 and August 13, unrelated to this session. No Display event ID 4101 in the System log at any point. The exception is also the wrong class: a driver hang would surface as DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_HUNG (0x887A0006) or DEVICE_REMOVED, not a null dereference inside the game executable.

Not EA AntiCheat. eaanticheat.gameservice.exe crashed at 22:41:04, which is 20 seconds after bf6.exe faulted at 22:40:44. It is a consequence, not the cause.

Not memory instability. The exception address, faulting offset and accessed address are identical across all 10 crashes over 67 minutes. Unstable memory produces varying signatures. For completeness: this system runs two different DDR4 kits (2x A-DATA 3200, 2x Kingston KF3600C17D4/8GX), all four running at 3200. That has been the configuration for months of stable play and does not explain a map-selective, bit-identical crash that started 98 minutes after an update.

Not an incomplete install. Steam reports StateFlags 4, 12 installed depots, no disabled DLC, BytesToDownload equal to BytesDownloaded, and buildid matching TargetBuildID.

NOTE FOR THE TEAM

The offset +0x5205665 is constant across every crash, so the fault is reachable from a single code path. Given that it only triggers on the two scenarios added in 1.4.2.0, resolving the symbol at that offset against your internal PDBs should identify the uninitialized object directly.

Minidumps are available on request: 20 of them from Documents\Battlefield 6\CrashDumps, plus the WER record AppCrash_bf6.exe_3e1a5749ba96d9d01c1fc5413bce25ed87b28b_0a056a4f.

Still a issue but found out I crash 100% of the time when trying to play Tsuru Reef on any game mode.

Have not been able to play Tsuru Reef since the Top Gun update. At first I thought it was only Carrier Strike but its all game modes on Tsuru Reef. Before this update my game was really stable with no issues of crashing ever.

I have the exact same issue on an RTX 3060 12GB,  Ryzen 5 5600X,  32GB RAM. Carrier Strike crashes during map loading after two short audio stutters, with no crash report. I have tested NVIDIA driver 596.49, cleared the BF6 and NVIDIA shader caches, disabled DLSS upscaling and changed graphics settings, but the crash remains. Definitely seems to be a game-side error, and I hope they can fix it ASAP.

The urgency from EA/devs to fix or provide a workaround should show you how much they don't give a rats bunghole

I reproduced the same crash signature on a separate PC running Battlefield 6 update 1.4.2.0.

Steam reacquired three files during installation verification. However, after the repair completed, Top Gun: Carrier Strike still crashed during map loading.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

REPRODUCTION

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

1. Launch Battlefield 6 through Steam.

2. Matchmake into Top Gun: Carrier Strike.

3. Expected result:

The map loads and the match starts.

4. Actual result:

The game exits to the desktop during map loading without displaying an error dialog.

5. After Steam reacquired the three files and installation verification completed, I relaunched the game and tried Carrier Strike again. The same crash occurred.

The game mode was identified from the test session. The crash dumps themselves do not record the game mode.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CRASH SIGNATURE

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

All recent dumps checked contain the same parsed exception signature:

• Exception code: 0xC0000005 (ACCESS_VIOLATION)

• Faulting module: bf6.exe

• Faulting offset: +0x5205665

• Faulting address: 0x0000000145205665

• Access type: READ

• ExceptionInformation[0]: 0x0

• Accessed address: 0x00000000000000A7

The two most recent dumps were generated after Steam repaired the installation:

• CrashDump_2026.08.24_02.42.43.197.mdmp

Time: 02:42:43 UTC+08:00

• CrashDump_2026.08.24_02.42.48.077.mdmp

Time: 02:42:48 UTC+08:00

The parsed exception records in these two dumps match those in the earlier recent dumps. Only the exception fields were compared; the complete dump binaries were not compared.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

REPAIR AND ANTI-CHEAT TIMELINE

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Steam initially reported three files that failed validation and reacquired them.

After the repair completed, the retest still produced the same exception code, instruction offset, and accessed address.

Windows timeline for the test session:

• 02:41:16 — The EAAntiCheat file-system filter loaded.

• 02:42:43 — A BF6 crash dump was written.

• 02:42:48 — A second BF6 crash dump was written.

• 02:42:50 — The EAAntiCheat file-system filter unloaded.

The minidumps identify the faulting instruction in bf6.exe.

This temporal ordering does not prove that EAAntiCheat caused the fault, nor does it exclude a possible indirect interaction.

No matching BF6 Application Error or Windows Error Reporting event (Event ID 1000 or 1001) appeared in the checked 30-minute Application-log window.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

SYSTEM INFORMATION

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

• Platform: Steam

• Steam Build ID: 24745559

• bf6.exe version: 1.0.443.60769

• Operating system: Windows 11 Pro 25H2, Build 26200

• CPU: Intel Core i9-13980HX

• Memory: 32 GB

• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU

• NVIDIA driver: 596.36

• Game language: Simplified Chinese

• The game language was not changed during this test.

This is a separate system from the one in the earlier report. The exact parsed exception signature matches despite differences in CPU, GPU, and NVIDIA driver.

Windows 11 Build 26200 is a shared environment detail between the reports, but this alone is not evidence that Windows caused the crash.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

ADDITIONAL NOTES

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The repeated low-address read is consistent with an invalid pointer in the game. However, the dumps alone do not prove a null-object root cause or identify a specific Carrier Strike code path.

Because the signature remained unchanged after Steam reacquired the failed files, simple installation corruption appears less likely. This does not completely rule out a driver or anti-cheat interaction.

The crash dumps have not been attached publicly. I can provide them through a private EA support channel if requested.

I found a fix for this issue that I had. Go to battlefield 6 files, search Levels, and delete all files named "Levels". Then Validate game, and it worked for me.

Hi there,

I’m sorry to hear that the game crashes to the desktop every time you try to load into Carrier Strike.

Have you tried the fix shared by PyroPoot​ and GalacticGuuse​?

Go to the Battlefield 6 Folder and search for "Levels". Delete every folder there, then go to Steam to verify the integrity of the game files. 

Please try the steps in our troubleshooting guide first and see if they help.

If the issue continues, please let me know whether Windows Event Viewer shows any related crash logs around the time it happens. You can also upload your full DxDiag report. Thanks.