Windows Update Causes Widespread Game Crashes

Microsoft has opened an investigation into reports that its August Patch Tuesday update is breaking PC games. The update, KB5121003, was released on August 11 and takes Windows 11 25H2 to build 26200.9168 and 24H2 to 26100.9168. It closed over 400 vulnerabilities, including one under active exploitation and two publicly disclosed zero-days.

The affected titles include ARC Raiders, MARVEL Tokon: Fighting Souls, and The Finals, with players reporting games becoming unresponsive, closing unexpectedly, or throwing an EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION error. Embark Studios, the developer behind both ARC Raiders and The Finals, pointed to inpoutx64.sys, a third-party kernel-level port access driver, as the likely culprit.

The company has asked players to file reports through the Feedback Hub, but has not accepted responsibility for the issue. In fact, its Windows release health dashboard still lists no known issues with KB5121003. This is the second time in eight months that a Windows security update has wrecked gaming stability.