Game crashing on PS4

[Senauer]

Hi there! I have been experiencing some crashes lately with the game while playing Survival Mode on PS4. The game is fully updated to the latest version available for download from the PS Store.

It did occur to me in the past (with older versions of the game) that, occasionally, the game would crash when entering a loading screen, then it would send me to the PS menu screen where I would get the option to report the problem. But in the last 24 hours it happened more than half a dozen times, some of these being while entering loading screens, but another handful when quick passing time between melting snow in a can and boiling the untreated water. It is funny that all crashes happened in Pleasant Valley, and as soon as I moved region I have not experienced any (fingers crossed). In fact, I do remember that most of the crashes in the past (if not all) may have occurred in PV.

If the crash happens in a loading screen then it can be tricky because you may have to redo many things that you did before. If it happens while boiling water then it's more bearable as the game autosaves after the melting process and before the boiling.

I have reported all crashes via the PS menu and attached the corresponding screenshots (you are given this option automatically), but unfortunately I do not have further information. If it happens again I can let you know the error description, should that help.

Many thanks in advance for your support and my apologies for the wall of text.

[stratvox]

When you melt snow and pass time, there's a save at the end (it's a bug; it's not supposed to do this). When you enter a loading screen area, there's a save.  I suspect the problem is in the save subsystem in some way. I'm wondering if maybe you need to run a file system check on the hard drive...

[Senauer]

@stratvox, many thanks for your advice. I shall look into how to perform a PS4 hard drive check, just in case it is something related to the save subsystem.

Browsing the forums I found a topic here suggesting that this could also be specifically related to the actions for melting/boiling water. Furthermore, in the thread here I found some suggested actions to "clean" the game file on the PS4, which I will also follow.

I'll post the results (if any), although it is nice to see that this is something in the radar of HL tech support 

[Support]

Hi @Senauer thanks for your post and your reports about this issue. We're glad the stability of the game seems to have improved since you moved on from this area. We've had some reports in the past of crashing during longer play sessions and when loading saves made while melting snow, although stability should have been improved in the most recent updates. 

Please do take a look at the steps posted in the other thread incase there is a problem with your locally stored game files. We are continuing to investigate how we can improve the game on PS4.

[Senauer]

Hi @Support, and first of all thanks in advance for following this up.

Fact is, I made a back-up of the saves and profile in PS Plus and reinstalled the game and everything from scratch, but unfortunately far from getting the crashes solved they got worse. As soon as I started playing and left Mystery Lake, I experienced three more crashes:

1. First one in Milton, once more after melting snow and before boiling the water.

2. Second one also in Milton, although this time after exiting an indoor location - which had never happened to me thus far.

3. And third one in Forlorn, which resulted in the complete loss of my save game file from my PS system.

Thankfully I had backed-up the saves, but even with that I lost progress worth of 4 (real time) days. Below you can see the blue screen of death that I got in all errors, just in case it helps:

At first I thought that perhaps the save file was corrupted, so I started a custom fresh game... and it crashed again a few hours later, this time after sleeping in a cave also in Milton.

So, all this makes me wonder if there really is a problem with my PS hard drive, if the game has serious stability issues in PS4, or even if it is just plain bad luck (perhaps a mix of all three?). I've seen other threads reporting erased saved games in the PS4, so I see I am not alone on this.

Anyway, lesson learnt: I always back-up now in PS Plus after a gaming session. If I die because of the game mechanics it's totally fair. In the end TLD is about that. If I lose my 215-day Stalker run to a crash, then it's definitely no fun.

[Support]

Thanks for sharing more details about this issue! We're tracking crashes and investigating some possible memory leaks that might be related to crashing. 

Something else you may find helpful is quitting and relaunching the game if your session has been longer than an hour or so. If the issue is related to memory use, this should help prevent crashing.

[Mr.Anonymous]

Hey @Senaner,

I just wanted to say thanks for reporting this in great detail. I'm also experiencing the same issues, too! From doing some poking around it would seem these issues are pretty widespread on console's. I tend to experience the most crashes in Milton Town, Pleasant Valley, and Coastal Highway. It seems to only happen when entering/exiting buildings for me, though.

There's nothing we can do about it either, this is clearly something the developers themselves need to fix. Deleting the game and reinstalling it won't do anything, and trust me I've tried it enough times to know. I have tried everything! All we can do is cross our fingers and toes hoping that Hinterland Studios releases a patch one day that fixes it. **shrugs**

[Senauer]

Hi @Mr.Anonymous, you're welcome! I'm glad this info can be of help to other console players. Also, this said by @Support:

On 8/7/2018 at 7:13 PM, Support said:

Something else you may find helpful is quitting and relaunching the game if your session has been longer than an hour or so. If the issue is related to memory use, this should help prevent crashing.

I found out that this is so far preventing my game from crashing again, so thanks. It's an interim solution, and I really hope that the stability issues are being taken care of and addressed in future patches, but for the time being it works for me -even though my game still usually crashes when the session last a bit longer, which is still annoying.

This, plus backing up my savegame and profile after each session to avoid the total loss of data. 

[Mr.Anonymous]

@Senauer,

Yeah I've actually been quitting and relaunching the game for a while now, especially when I'm in the region's I mentioned above where the crashing seems to happen the most for me. It is a good temporary solution, but it doesn't work all the time. And yes, backing up your saved data onto a USB stick is definitely a must! I tend to do that with most indie games that are running on the Unity engine because they all seem to share the same problems, unfortunately. 

Hopefully there will be a fix for all the crashing soon, because it is getting ridiculous now. I spent £30 on this game when it first came out and never once regretted it despite some of the rather obnoxious issues it has! It was way worse on launch too, but thankfully the developers fixed a lot of it and got it working somewhat better over time, which gives me hope that they'll fix it completely. It's just a matter of when will they fix it at this point, and I feel it should be their main priority right now as it's becoming quite a hindrance. Not to mention the fact that they're releasing a retail version! Seems like a bold move if you ask me, given the current state of the game on console's. 

[godhelpme89]

I have been getting this same problem. Seems to have gotten better but I still get it at least once every time.

[Mr.Anonymous]

8 hours ago, godhelpme89 said:

I have been getting this same problem. Seems to have gotten better but I still get it at least once every time.

Same here. 

It'll keep happening until it gets fixed. That's just the reality of it, unfortunately. I just looked at the "error history" on my PS4 to count how many times The Long Dark has crashed exactly, and I counted 23 times in total. That's pretty abysmal to be frankly honest! I don't think I've ever played a game that has crashed this much. 

I can deal with the jittery frame rates that only occur when you're in certain regions like the town of Milton, or some of your items disappearing when being attacked by a bear, but when it comes to crashing with such a frequency like this that's just a big no no for me.

 

Side Note: 

I absolutely love this game. It is by far one of the most immersive games I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing, and will undoubtedly be one of those games I'll keep coming back to from time-to-time years down the road. But, that said, the constant crashing is starting to take it's toil now because it's preventing me from actually playing the game how I want to.

For example, I have so many supplies back at Pleasant Valley inside the farmstead such as tons of cloth, sewing kits, riffle ammo, and even a bunch of tinned food in the fridge. Not to even mention a massive pile of bear meat neatly sitting outside on the porch! But the crashing that happens within that region is preventing me from going back there because it's dreadful. There's nothing worse than being kicked out of your own game in my opinion, especially when it's a game such as this where it relies on ones ability to immerse themselves into every second of it.

[godhelpme89]

I did not know you could check your error history, I will when I get home.

[godhelpme89]

Wow just checked, 44 times this game crashed!

[Mr.Anonymous]

On Tuesday, August 14, 2018 at 8:17 PM, godhelpme89 said:

Wow just checked, 44 times this game crashed!

Ridiculous, isn't it. 

The best thing Hinterland Studio's could do in this situation is hire a small team of developers who have more experience with console's to come in and try to fix these persistent crashing issues. Seems that would be their best option really, and the reason I'm saying this is because I doubt anyone at Hinterland Studio's even plays The Long Dark on console's.

What do you guys think?

[Support]

Thanks everyone for your posts about this issue. As we have mentioned previously, stability on the PS4 is important to us -- we have team members dedicated to performance on console and investigating issues that occur on those platforms -- we're not ignoring reports of crashing , and appreciate your patience while we investigate. We know some of these issues have been persisting for a while and promise we are just as frustrated as you are with them.

[WanderingPalm]

Hello! My roommate has been having this problem consistently, too. He has 37 crashes since June 7, 2018, often within an hour of starting/restarting after the last crash. He has reported every one through the prompt the PS4 provides (error code is always CE-34878-0) with the footage leading up to the crash, but didn’t think it was necessary to report it on the forums (>.> which is why I’m reporting it). This crash will always result in him having to relaunch the game (the crash having closed the game) and resume from whatever save was the most recent before the crash interrupted the attempted save.

I’ve witnessed these crashes several times, and it definitely seems tied to the auto save mechanic. The most common crashes occur when: he enters a building (most common), he tries to sleep, or he gets injured. He has seen it happen on occasion from passing time on melting water, but he rarely utilizes that option, anyway. There was also an odd crash that happened simply when he was walking, but there was no indication a sprain may have caused it like there normally is in that situation. He says there was no noticeable difference in occurrence from region to region, being equally common in all areas.

As for the savefile itself, he is on Voyageur, female survivor, day 476 with 87% of the world explored (and theoretically, mapped. The majority of the unexplored area is the new map, Hushed River Vally. The crashes have only been occurring with this increased frequency since the last update. This is, of course, on a fully updated PS4, with a fully updated game.

As a potentially related bug, another curious thing I witnessed in his game (and he reported happens on occasion) is a strange audio bug when sleeping. It sounds like the zipper of the bedroll got stuck repeating part of the sound for the entire time he’s asleep (with a different sound when this occurs in a bed). The game resumes just fine afterwards. This could be entirely unrelated, since it’s never happened at other auto-save times, but on the off chance it has anything at all to do with the crashing bug, I thought it would be a good idea to include it.

I hope this additional info helps track down what’s causing this bug!

[wolkenwand]

I just having a crash on ps4, playing in Mystery Lake and Coastal Highway until 50day+ then built bearskin bedroll and heading to timberwolf mountain and the game crash again in Pleasant Valley farmstead house. I think OP is right it seems that the crashing only occurs in Pleasant Valley and it has chance to happen when entering/exiting building in that region regardless of your session time, i experiencing crashing in the past that happen few minutes after load the game, doing stuff and exiting house in Pleasant Valley

[Support]

Thanks for the update, wolkenwand.  From what we have been able to see from more recent reports, the issue seems to be related to memory use by the game. We've released some fixes over the past year that have improved things, but unfortunately not resolved it entirely -- yet. However this is something we're continuing to work on!

In the meantime, here are a few things you can do on your side that can help with crashing:

• Power-cycle your console every once and a while (at least once a month)-- this helps to flush any lingering system issues.
• If you are experiencing very frequent crashing, such as if this occurs after less an an hour of play, try uninstalling and reinstalling the game. This should resolve any issues related to missing or corrupted game files.
• Memory- related issues are more likely to appear during longer play sessions, so occasionally relaunching the game app is a good way to help prevent crashes. If you've been playing for longer than 2 hours, consider closing and reopening the game. 

Hope that helps!