Update 2: Capcom has informed IGN that a patch to combat Monster Hunter World's see deal Monster Hunter World - PS4 $59.99on Gamestop

Update: IGN has received a response from Capcom saying it is "aware of the crash issue and a fix is already in the works." Capcom wouldn't provide an explanation for the cause of the problem, nor would they tell us when we can expect the fix, so we still don't know if it will arrive before or after its August 9 launch.

Last week I was initially impressed with Monster Hunter: World’s PC port. While it’s undoubtedly demanding, it generally runs nice and smooth. And even though that initial assessment has mostly held strong as I play more, a pretty serious crashing issue has started to rear its ugly head.

At random times with no warning, Monster Hunter: World will freeze up briefly and then simply close out of the game entirely, leaving you staring at your desktop wondering what happened. We’re not sure exactly how widespread the issue is, but it seems to have happened at least once to everyone I’ve spoken to with pre-release access.

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The video above is still a good breakdown of the port, but was recorded last week and doesn’t mention the crash issue.

Thankfully I didn’t experience these hard crashes for the first 10+ hours I played, so it’s not so common as to make it unplayable across the board. But once I started playing online co-op for the first time, I had three different crashes. Meanwhile, IGN’s James Duggan has experienced them much more frequently whether he’s playing alone or not, and that’s even across two different PCs.

“ Capcom has acknowledged that Monster Hunter: World is a CPU-hungry game, but it’s unclear whether or not that’s what is causing the crashes.

We don’t really know what the cause is here yet, though Capcom has already acknowledged that it’s a CPU-hungry game. A friend of mine was experiencing crashes on one PC, but they seemed to stop when he switched to a different machine with a better CPU. But both machines James plays on have great CPUs, and he says that he’ll get more frequent crashes while using certain weapons, especially the Sword and Shield -- whereas playing with others was my only consistent factor.

It’s extremely unfortunate, especially in a game where an ill-timed crash could mean losing an entire 30+ minute fight. I crashed once at the start of a hard fight, and even though I managed to relaunch and get back in, it felt like an axe was hanging over my head just waiting to fall the whole way through. I want to worry about the monsters, not the game.

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But more than that, this is a big blemish on Monster Hunter: World’s otherwise solid (if still demanding) port. On the High preset, I’m getting a constant 60fps on a PC with a GTX 1070ti GPU and a Intel i5-4670 CPU, which is a CPU about four or five years old now. According to my Task Manager, my CPU is running at 100% while I’m playing, but I get fewer crashes than James, who is playing with better CPUs.

We’ve reached out to Capcom for a response to the issue and will update this story when they get back to us. Here’s hoping the issue can be patched before Monster Hunter: World launches next week, especially since it's apparently now sold 8 million copies.

Tom Marks is IGN's PC Editor and pie maker. You can follow him on Twitter