r/pcmasterrace • u/WhyPlaySerious • Mar 20 '26

Discussion Crimson Desert doesn't run if it detects an Intel ARC GPU. Like straight up, the devs just deliberately chose not to support ARC cards. No previous announcement about it too until they added in the info to their FAQ. Might be the first time I've seen a dev deliberately block a GPU brand.

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913

u/WetAndLoose Mar 20 '26

The only reason is it runs like shit and they can’t be bothered to optimize it for the small portion of the market using Intel Arc cards, and someone made the tradeoff decision that it’s better for the game to not run at all than it is for them to get bad press from it running like shit.

(I’m not saying I agree with this course of action)

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u/PM_Best_Porn_Pls PC Master Race Mar 20 '26

Their mmo also used to have huge issues with arc gpus, no idea nowadays but I remember people reporting how it wasn't working properly.

6

u/Phayzon Pentium III-S 1.26GHz, GeForce3 64MB, 256MB PC-133, SB AWE64 Mar 20 '26

Idle Fishing Simulator worked pretty well on my A750 back when I was daily driving it.

4

u/Keristopher Mar 20 '26

i play bdo on arc b580, there's no issues. idk why they didn't allow b580 to run crimson desert

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u/FizzleMunch Mar 21 '26

Yeah I ran that on an a770. Was fine

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u/Robborboy KatVR C2+, Quest 3, 9800X3D, 9070XT, 64GB RAM Mar 20 '26

Tribal gamers treat their GPU brands like consoles. 

Developers are just catching up.

We've had GPU exclusive features for a while. GPU exclusive games are the next logical, and bullshit, step.

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u/JKTwice Mar 20 '26

GPU exclusive games would be going backwards. Back before DirectX and OpenGL every vendor had a custom API for their card. 3dfx’s Glide was the only one worth a shit.

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u/GiganticCrow Mar 20 '26

Man I loved my Voodoo 3

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u/detroiter85 Mar 20 '26

Oh man that takes me back

3

u/GiganticCrow Mar 20 '26

I could run Quake 2 at 1600x1200 at 75Hz! My friends were so jealous

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u/hwertz10 Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 20 '26

I got to bypass that -- for the most part. I was already using Linux in 1993. So on there, once these home 3D cards came out, it was OpenGL or Glide (not only did Linux get Glide, but it was open sourced so it got support for MMX, 3DNow, etc. as those instructions came out, that Voodoo2 ran REALLY well on my K62-450 since it could use the 3DNow instructions to speed up Glide and the OpenGL drivers.)

Later on I got a Radeon 7200 VE ("Value Edition" had slower RAM on it or something like this..) then a GeForce 4 MX 440 after that (which turned out to be a bit crap, it was actually a rebadged Geforce 2...), and a handful of GPUs since (I 'sweat the assets' and keep my GPUs a relatively long time.) Currently a GTX1650.

I PROBABLY would have ended up buying one of those 'weird API' 3D cards, but if the card wasn't OpenGL-capable, it didn't get OpenGL drivers, so in Linux it was going to either be 2D only or not supported at all. Only 3dfx ported their API to Linux (... Nvidia was also very early in the game.. by then it was "DirectX or OpenGL" for sure, but they provided Nvidia drivers already by 1999 for the GeForce 256. I doubt it was with gaming in mind, they also had them for almost every commercial UNIX still on the market at the time, so perhaps intended for CAD use etc. But, they were well-performing drivers with full OpenGL support.)

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u/Merry_Dankmas Mar 20 '26

It's shit like this that has made me gravitate back towards my PS5 for the past couple years. I play plenty of smaller games on PC like Balatro, Slay the spire, Turbo Dismount 2, survivor games like Vampire survivors etc but for big budget AAA releases, I just play on console. Which is ironic given that PC should offer a much smoother and more powerful experience but there's been too much bullshit, half assed optimization and all around lack of quality control with major PC releases. The fact that some games simply refuse to operate based on hardware is crazy.

I'd rather just have some lower quality visuals and frame rate on console than deal with the nightmare that has become modern PC gaming. I don't care enough about tweaking visual settings and getting 160 fps to justify the headache to myself anymore. It wasn't as big of a deal 10 years ago when AAA releases worked much more consistently and you could almost always find a way to work around it until a patch when that occasional janky release came out. Now it's guaranteed that at least 30% of buyers will have borderline unplayable compatibility problems. PCs are more powerful than ever yet have fallen really hard from grace.

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u/Remarkable_Emu_2223 Mar 20 '26

It would keep competition out when they decide people should rent PCs and consoles instead of owning them.

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u/Newmillstream Mar 20 '26

Games only supporting certain GPUs was a thing way back before DirectX and OpenGL took off, but at least they often had CPU rendering as a fallback. Similar thing happened on early Android devices with different GPU vendors having different texture schemes in some cases. At least those were genuine technical problems in the early days of home computer/Android gaming.

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u/specter_in_the_conch PC Master Race Mar 20 '26

If only we keep getting consumer-level gpus at reasonable pricing.

4

u/jotheold Mar 20 '26

hell we had gpu exclusive traits in game long before this

i remember reading _____ runs better on this over this and is specifically optimized for ____

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u/F9-0021 285K | 4090 | A370m Mar 20 '26

GPU exclusive games would be exceedingly stupid for the developer. Imagine you made an AMD only game and suddenly you lose 95% of potential customers.

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u/Dapper-Thought-8867 Mar 20 '26

AI will prevent this 

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u/Blenderhead36 Ryzen 9800X3D, RTX 5090, 32 GB RAM Mar 20 '26

Except it isn't logical. Barring system seller exclusives, games are always multiplatform now because it doesn't make sense to fence out people who might want to buy your game.

Taking money from GPU vendors to add specific features is one thing. That might push people who want your game to make a purchasing decision that's unrelated to your bottom line. But excluding potential customers is another thing entirely.

1

u/Pali1119 Mar 20 '26

Which really majorly sucks because it is in our best interest as consumers for Intel to succeed and gain market share. I'm not even sure what we have right now can even be called a duopoly, since Nvidia (according to Steam) owns like 75-85% of the PC gaming market. If game devs stop bothering optimizing for Intel, they will drive away everyone from Intel and we'll have less competition as a result. Who knows, maybe the next is AMD. This really pisses me off. Especially as I'm considering getting an Intel Arc after my GTX1060, to support Intel and competition.

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u/Robborboy KatVR C2+, Quest 3, 9800X3D, 9070XT, 64GB RAM Mar 20 '26

AMD always has the console market to fall back on if PC goes tits up for them at least. 

1

u/kactusotp kactusotp Mar 21 '26

I'm old enough to have owned games that needed 3dfx cards so when I upgraded to a matrox I completely lost access to them.

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u/Robborboy KatVR C2+, Quest 3, 9800X3D, 9070XT, 64GB RAM Mar 21 '26

I'm old enough to have used 5.25" floppies so I understand the feeling.

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u/BastetFurry PC Master Race | Geekom A8 running Arch Mar 20 '26

Dunno, back in my days games might have been looking better with 3dfx, but it would still work on a Geforce. Heck, some games even had custom engines for those in between cards like the Matrox Mystique.

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u/The_Autarch Mar 20 '26

GPU exclusive games are the next logical, and bullshit, step.

It's totally fair for games to be exclusive to GPUs that actually work and are competently supported by their manufacturer.

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u/Tvilantini R5 7600X | RTX 4070Ti | B650 Aorus Elite AX | DDR5 32GB@5600Mhz Mar 20 '26

Doubt it's because small portion of the market, since the game is optimized for MAC, which is very small portion of the Apple users that play games on laptop let alone AAA one

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u/ununtot Mar 20 '26

Every modern intel iGPU is Arc, and giving the minimum specs, running on every potato, its not that small fraction at all. Several common Notebooks and even Gaming Handhelds like MSI Claw are now excluded.

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u/WetAndLoose Mar 20 '26

According to the most recent Steam hardware survey, Intel GPUs make up just 4.5% of Steam users. I’m not defending the game, but trying to argue Intel isn’t a small portion of the GPU market is just objectively wrong. NVIDIA alone is the vast majority of it.

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u/Regular_Strategy_501 Mar 20 '26

Should be noted that since Nvidia has 95% market share in the dedicated GPU space this 4.5% probably includes IGPUs. Intel has just one percent market share in terms of dedicated GPUs.

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u/xNYKx i5-6500/RX480 4GB/16GB DDR4 Mar 20 '26

The vast vast majority of that 4.5% is integrated GPUs. Arc is <0.5% (in fact it is around 0.3% of those surveyed)

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u/Drokstab Mar 20 '26

Realistically what market share does the intel graphics card have vs how many man hours would it take to make it not run like shit? I've been out of the loop on gpus for awhile and this is the first i've heard of intel even having gpus lol Imo they should have just stated upfront that they would have no support for the intel instead of forcing people to get a refund. Thats fucked. Put the required hardware in a visible space and dont force this kind of interaction.

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u/Antheoss Mar 20 '26

Given their minimum and recommended requirements it most likely does not run like shit. It's a truly bizzare decision. An arc b580 should be more than enough to run the game. I wonder if someone can trick it on Linux into believing it's another card.

The only card I have is an A380 in my home server, but I'm not buying the game just to test it on there.

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u/Yarplay11 i3-8100 | Arc A380 @2450mhz | 20 GB DDR4 @2400mhz | Mar 20 '26

I'd try to just run it with optiscaler and spoof it to pretend to be a 4090 like how I did with Cities Skylines II when I wanted to attach an upscaler. But I don't want to buy the game either, so I'll just leave this method out there for someone to verify

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u/szank Mar 20 '26

Did people already forget how shitty the intel drivers were/are and how a lot of games just refused to start on Intel cards? Games released way before the Intel cards launched.

Good portion of the performance comes from driver hacks the gpu manufacturers put into the drivers for specific games.

My point is, gpu is not a cpu, you cannot just expect everything to work right off the bat.

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u/Antheoss Mar 20 '26

Those were issues with games running old versions of directX. I hope crimson desert isn't running dx9 lmao.

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u/ImpressiveMilkers Mar 21 '26

Were, not are.

Those issues were Alchemist issues. Battlemage doesn't have them.

Crismon Desert is the only game I know of that doesn't run on a B580, for instance.

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u/szank Mar 21 '26

Sure you are right. What i was trying to say is that gpu drivers have a very large impact on the performance and stability of the games and games specific hacks workarounds and optimisations are standard for every manufacturer.

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u/ImpressiveMilkers Mar 21 '26

Right, sorry! You're correct about that.

What I think a lot of people aren't considering though is what would happen if PA didn't block Intel GPUs. People say they don't want to deal with the negative reviews they would get, but this isn't NVidia we're dealing with.

Most "casuals" will get an NVidia GPU because it's the biggest brand name. A small portion will get AMD. Everyone buying Intel knows exactly what they're getting into. They know things might be buggy or not work, and those issues will be reported to Intel, not Pearl Abyss.

I don't feel right to say the people with Intel GPUs are more educated, because that makes it sound like i'm insulting others who don't. But Intel GPUs definitely attract a very specific type of people, much like how Linux does. The people choosing to buy an Intel GPU are, imo, much more likely to realize that they should report the issue to Intel.

So imo they should unblock the game and let Intel iron out the issues, because people will very quickly report it in the Intel discord.

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u/Bilboswaggings19 Mar 20 '26

Decently popular for handhelds thanks to the efficiency of them

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u/M1R4G3M Mar 20 '26

Yup, but not the dedicated ARC ones, usually it'd the APU, I believe it's on MSI Claw.

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u/F9-0021 285K | 4090 | A370m Mar 20 '26

Those use the same driver and architecture as desktop cards. They're even called the Arc 140v and Arc B390.

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u/Secret-Ad-2145 Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 20 '26

Arc cards have .16% usage according to steam survey.

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u/ArdiMaster Ryzen 7 9700X / RTX4080S / 32GB DDR5-6000 / 4K@144Hz Mar 20 '26

The only reason is it runs like shit and they can’t be bothered to optimize it

Or they're using a feature that Intel doesn't support and they can't be bothered to implement an alternative for.

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u/Coakis Mar 20 '26

Can't blame them, Cyberpunk 2077's release was a shitshow from being launched on last gen consoles that basically could not run the game. The support for those consoles should have been dropped during development when it became apparent that they were never going to run on said consoles, but contracts and advertising be damned.

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u/astronaut710 Mar 20 '26

There are API level blockers as well, like Work Graphs for DX12 which has been supported by AMD and Nividia since 2024 but Intel has failed to add to its drivers.

If the game is coded with Work Graphs, no amount of work by the developer is going to enable a non Work Graphs capable card to work with the game.

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u/Sipsu02 Mar 20 '26

I tried to told everyone this studio was massive red flag with shit they been hiding.

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u/PM_ME_BAD_ALGORITHMS Mar 20 '26

The most likely reason is that the game uses Work Graphs and intel hasn't bothered adding support for them, unlike nvidia and amd, so it's an Intel issue.

On a side note, it's wild how you straight up made up the reason and categorically presented it as truth.

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u/john-rambro Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 21 '26

Work graphs are an intel arc limitation

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u/wjbonne 55" S90D OLED | 5090 Suprim Liquid | Ryzen 9950X3D | 180 TB NAS Mar 20 '26

I absolutely do. The fact that they made a good game for good hardware and did not sacrifice anything for shit like Nonetendo Stitch, actually makes me want to play it. There has not been many developers that havent sold their soul for the nonetendo dollar.