The Latest Skyrim: Special Edition Patch Is Causing Problems On Every Platform

Sometimes fixing a problem can create many more problems. That's the lesson that Bethesda is learning right now with their attempts to fix Skyrim: Special Edition on home consoles and PC after releasing a new patch for the game.

Eurogamer is reporting that gamers across social media and Bethesda's own forums are all reporting that the patch for 1.1 on PC and patch 1.03 on PS4 and Xbox One are causing problems when it comes time to load saved games. It's being said that when the games load they the game then freezes and then shortly thereafter crashes.

In the Reddit thread specifically, there are quite a few upvoted comments making it known that they are playing the vanilla version of Skyrim: Special Edition and not the modded version of the game. They were quick to point out that they've already put in hours of gameplay into the open-world, medieval fantasy title and that they didn't start having this problem until after the most recent patch dropped.

Some are saying that the game crashes anywhere between two and five minutes into loading, which means you aren't accomplishing much before it crashes back to the desktop. I remember when issues like this were limited to PC gaming only and you would have to go through all sorts of crazy troubleshooting techniques to fix the problem. And now console gamers get to experience the same problems as PC gamers, only they don't get the benefit of having hotfixes attempt to solve the problem.

Given the difficulty of getting patches up and out on consoles due to the certification process, it means that it takes a lot longer for patches and hotfixes to be made available to the public on consoles like the Xbox One and PS4.

As reported by Eurogamer, Bethesda did issue a beta patch for PC gamers, allowing them to test out patch 1.2 in Skyrim: Special Edition ahead of their console brethren. The new patch increases stability and performance, and also fixes two issues that caused crashing, as well as bug fixes for mod browsing and installation. They also cleaned up a graphics issue with the water flow not rendering the way it was supposed to.

If you're on PC using the Steam version of the game, you can opt-in to play test the latest patch by choosing to enable the beta content. This will put you into the beta mode of Skyrim: Special Edition and allow you to check out the newest patches for the game as Bethesda makes them available. Of course, you'll need to keep in mind that the patches may be unstable and you'll be flying in blind with some of the content.

Xbox One and PS4 owners will receive the Skyrim patch soon after it gets certified, but until then they'll have to deal with the crashing.

On the upside, not everyone is reporting that the game is crashing on them. So even though patch 1.1 on PC and patch 1.03 on PS4 and Xbox One is causing some people problems, others are not having that problem. One user also mentioned that disabling features like the pen services and touch keyboard in Windows 10 fixed the problem for him, but console gamers don't have pen services and touch keyboards, so they may have to find another hotfix for Skyrim until Bethesda issues patch 1.2 proper.