Path of Exile 2 Developers Ship Entire PC to Nvidia to Fix Game-Crashing Bug
The developers of Path of Exile 2 had to take an extreme measure to fix a long-standing issue with Nvidia drivers. The problem, known as the 'Device Removed' error, would cause the game to freeze and stutter during high-end gameplay sessions.
The issue was first reported in December 2025, when the game's Early-Access patch was released. However, it wasn't until after 18 months of effort that a solution was found.
GGG, the developers of Path of Exile 2, worked with Nvidia to fix the problem. In a unique approach, they packaged an entire PC, complete with monitor, mouse, and keyboard, and shipped it to Nvidia for testing. This allowed Nvidia's engineers to reproduce the issue and identify the root cause.
The solution was found to be related to an internal 'shader heap size' value, which was increased in the recent Nvidia 610.88 Game Ready Driver update. Additionally, GGG has implemented optimizations to reduce shader file sizes in ongoing efforts to improve performance.