Systematic freeze around the 16th minute of a match — PC/Steam
Hello,
I am experiencing a reproducible freeze issue with EA SPORTS FC 26 (Steam version): the image completely freezes while the audio continues playing in the background. After a few seconds, I am forced to close the game (Alt+F4), and the PC becomes very slow right after, until resources free up.
Observed behavior:
The freeze occurs almost systematically around the 16th minute of a match, regardless of the game mode played (tested both online and in offline Kick-off).
Reproducible on Medium AND Low graphics settings.
Reproducible using DirectX 11 (via -dx11 launch option) AND DirectX 12 (default).
No freezes observed on other recent games tested in parallel (40 minutes of gameplay without any issues on another recent AAA title), which seemingly rules out a general hardware issue.
What I have already tried without success:
Verified integrity of game files via Steam.
Clean uninstallation and reinstallation of EA Anti-Cheat (Javelin).
Disabled all overlays (Steam, Discord, GPU, Game Bar).
Clean GPU driver reinstallation using DDU with a stable version.
Disabled HAGS (Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling).
Deleted/reset the game configuration folder in AppData.
Tested with the -dx11 launch option.
None of these steps resolved the issue or changed the timing of the freeze.
My specs:
[R5 3600x / rtx 5060/ 16gb ram]
Given how consistent the timing is (~16th minute) and the lack of improvement despite standard fixes (game files, anti-cheat, drivers, config, DirectX), this seems to point to an engine-side bug (memory leak or internal script loop) rather than a local configuration issue.
