Welcome to my fifth ever Steam guide which will focus on the amazing masterpiece that you all know and love called:

The culprit was originally thought to most likely be a major memory leak issue (a possibility that is still circulating a bit here and there) but it has more or less been relatively debunked as multiple people have confirmed that it's not the case.

Though bare in mind that "multiple people" doesn't mean "everyone" so we're only roughly 90%-ish sure it's not a RAM and/or VRAM leak.

While I am aware that there are other problems as well, I'm only going to list the more major/common ones and especially the ones for which there are potential fixes, namely:

- hitching
- freezing
- stuttering
- PlayStation overlay error (Failed to initialize PlayStation PC SDK)
- slow PC after a few hours of gameplay and even after exiting the game
- savegames bug where you have no access to any autosaves and cannot manually save either

- try this mod[www.nexusmods.com] which enables High CPU Priority for the game executable via a registry tweak (completely harmless registry modification whose contents can be checked at any time using Notepad or any other similar software)

- exit "Malwarebytes" and/or any other antivirus software that you're using (turning off "Malwarebytes" and switching to Fullscreen genuinely fixed the game for me AND apparently for A LOT of other people as well)

- disable overlays such as the "GeForce Experience" one, the "Steam" one, the "PlayStation" one and so on

- disable Frame Generation ingame

- if you're running the game in Exclusive Fullscreen mode, switch to Fullscreen

- disable fullscreen optimizations and also run the game as an Administrator (both settings can be found in the Properties and Compatibility tab of the game executable)
(also in the Properties > Compatibility tab, change the high DPI settings by selecting Override high DPI scaling behavior and making sure it’s set to Application)

- and last but not least, turn off pretty much all third-party software (not to mention exit resource hog applications such as Chrome and whatnot) that you don't need running in the background as a lot of them eat resources "like it's nobody's business" and maybe you don't need some or most of them while playing this game or any other game for that matter





Issue - no Playstation overlay. ("Failed to initialize PlayStation PC SDK" error)

Fix - open your game folder ("your path:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Ghost of Tsushima DIRECTOR'S CUT") and run "PsPcSdkRuntimeInstaller.msi" found inside the main folder, then go to "C:\ProgramData\Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc\PSPC_SDK\S22\2.13.00.01" and run "PsPcSdkAppMgr.exe".
(you may need to unhide your "Windows" folders as "ProgramData" doesn't show up if it's hidden in your system)
(you may also need to do this everytime you start the game or restart your PC, so I suggest creating shortcuts on your desktop for both those files)


Issue - the game is not saving, nor can I save manually. (you have no access to any autosaves and cannot save yourself either)

Fix - hit the Start button, type in Windows Security, go to Virus & threat protection, then down to Ransomware protection (at the bottom), click on Manage ransomware protection and here, if the Controlled folder access button is set to On, simply turn it Off.
(MORE SIMPLE VERSION - hit the Start button, search for "controlled folder access" and if it's On, turn it Off)

For those of you not too versed/familiar with tweaking your ingame graphics settings, I highly recommend watching:

THIS VIDEO (from Digital Foundry)
as well as
THIS ONE (from BenchmarKing)

These videos will definitely help you gain some extra frames and they will very likely improve your overall performance as well, especially since there are some graphics settings that demand A LOT of resources when set to higher levels.

Regardless of what is causing all these issues though, while they're not affecting everyone, those that are affected and still cannot find a fix from the ones provided here, should send a ticket to troubleshooting/support.

These problems need to be addressed ASAP because apart from a few issues here and there, the game itself is a masterpiece that needs to be experienced by us PC players in the most polished and optimized way possible.

This guide was created on May 19th, before ANY patch/update existed for the game.

Since then and as of the editing of this Guide (June 4th respectively), four patches/updates/hotfixes have been released, fixing some stability, visual, UI, gameplay and matchmaking issues (among other things), and as time passes, it's more than likely that the remaining problems will be addressed via more future hotfixes/updates/patches, so if sometime in the future you stumble upon this Guide and find it redundant, just remember - its initial creation was done before ANY update/patch/hotfix had been released.

The same goes for the videos linked in this Guide which are also subject to change as time passes. Regardless though, I highly recommend those channels in general (Digital Foundry and BenchmarKing) for all your benchmarking needs, since they are hands down the best in this regard.

If you've found this particular guide useful, then consider checking out my other guides as well.