PC continues to be the fastest growing base of the fighting game community, which means a lot more players are finding out how finnicky things can be and the unique types of issues that can occur.
Some Tekken 8 users have been reporting consistent crashes on the Steam version of the 3D fighter, and the game’s director has stepped in to try and offer some technical support for a fix.
Kohei ‘Nakatsu’ Ikeda recently took to X/Twitter to share a settings change outside of the game itself that may help alleviate errors and crashes players are running into on certain stages like Yakushima and Urban Square.
According to Nakatsu, users need to right click on Tekken 8 in Steam’s interface and select Properties.
Next, input “-SM5” into the Launch Options section at the bottom of the General settings, and that’s it.
This fix is apparently specifically for PCs with Nvidia GTX 1000 series graphics cards, but other users have tried the fix as well with some reporting it appeared to work for them too.
For those experiencing crashes with “TEKKEN 8” on Steam and encountering the error image attached:
Example of confirmed improvement: On PC setups using NVIDIA’s GTX 1000 series graphics cards, crashes occur after playing for a certain period on stages like “YAKUSHIMA” or “URBAN… pic.twitter.com/vRBzCsMh8L
— Kohei Ikeda（Nakatsu） (@nkt_dreamer) March 2, 2024
It sounds like this adjustment makes the game run more stable texture pack that’ll be better for certain hardware though there’s some reports as well this may also have a slightly negative impact on performance.
We’ve also seen users suggest inputting “-dx12” into the Luanch Options, which may also help fix some issues though we haven’t tested that.
As for AMD graphics cards, there’s users suggesting to roll back graphics drivers to before the 24.1.1 update that could help for performance and crashes — but again we haven’t personally tested them.
Roll back your driver to 23.12.1 or below. Personally I use 23.11.1. The 24.1.1 update that “supports” Tekken tanks the performance for some and also makes it crash.
Keep in mind that shaders and such will have to reload when you use new drivers
— Brainzzz123 (@brainzzz123) March 2, 2024
If you noticed the performance getting worse in Tekken 8 after this week’s sizable update, it’s not just you either, but it’s also not exactly the game running worse.
Instead, it appears that Tekken 8 does not have the same shader pre-compilation options that other recent big fighters like Street Fighter 6 and Mortal Kobmat 1 have.
This means that after an update to the game or graphics drivers, Tekken 8 will need to load up the shaders all over again as they’re being rendered, which can cause performance drops while happening.
These should hopefully alleviate after playing the game for a short while against different characters and on different stages.
Have you been running into issues with Tekken 8 on PC? Let us know in the comments.