Hogwarts Legacy is working poorly on PC on the lead up to the game’s launch later today, February 10, 2023. 10 AM PT. Its launch platforms are PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store.
As reported by PC Gamer, even PC builds that meet the game’s minimum system requirements are having trouble running the game. The most common issue players have reported is stuttering, possibly because of poor optimization of the Unreal Engine.
Apparently it can bug out on cutscenes in such a way, that it appears that your PC is unable to run the game. The stuttering also causes the audio to desync with the cutscenes. Other players report stuttering when doing things like moving between towers, or running across the open world.
These issues exist regardless of the specifications of your PC build, and no matter how low you drop the graphical settings. In fact, players using top of the line hardware, such as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070, or the Intel Core i9 13900K, are reporting issues running the game.
Fans have made their own fixes, but since these aren’t official, your mileage may vary. The best hope PC players have is the upcoming day one patch, that promises fixes for game crashing, stuttering, lag, and other performance improvements.
Portkey Games had initially decided not to allow preloading for the Steam version of Hogwarts Legacy, but did an immediate about face the day after. We now know that Portkey deliberately wanted to hide these issues from players by not allowing them to try it out beforehand. Bugs were being reported as soon as the day after Portkey opened the proverbial gates to PC players for Early Access.
It certainly appears that Portkey Games played favorites, prioritizing the console players over PC players, when it comes to Hogwarts Legacy. We also reported yesterday that players examining the Steam game files, found that the PlayStation exclusive Hogsmeade Haunted Shop is already in the Steam version.
Portkey Games stuck with this, in spite of knowing that Hogwarts Legacy has consistently stayed on top of Steam’s wishlist game charts. Trackers also confirmed that Steam saw large player numbers just for this one game. Time will tell if Portkey Games and Avalanche Software do good by the PC players in the coming weeks and months.
Hogwarts Legacy will be published on April 4, 2023, on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. It will come to the Nintendo Switch on July 25, 2023.
