Relationship change causes game crash followed by blue screen

Technical Help
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1

  • Game Version:

  • Platform: (Steam windows / Steam Mac / Mac)

  • Mods: (Choose one: never used / removed / active)
    :round_pushpin:If you have used mods before, please list them:

  • Hardware Specifications & Operating System (OS version, CPU, GPU, RAM, storage…):

  • Issue Date:

  • Error Message:

  • Details:

Hi!

I’m reporting a bug I’ve had for a while now. I just tested the game with the patch from April 10th, 2026, it’s still present.

The game is not fully playable for me at the moment because a major function of ZOI relationship building crashes my game.

When I choose to change a relationship between ZOIs via interacton, the game crashes. I almost always get blue screen. In rare cases I don’t and if I try to run the game again, this message pops up: “The game may not run due to limited graphics performance. Your graphics card does not fully support required DirectX 12 features.”

All my drivers are up-to-date.

Let me know if I can add any more information that would help.

  • Platform: Steam
  • Mods: The same happens with or without mods. When I have mods on, it’s create ZOI mods only. I don’t play with mods that change the mechanics of the game.
  • Hardware Specifications & Operating System:

    • Operating System: Windows 11

    • RAM: 16,0 GB

    • CPU: 13th Gen Intel(R) Core™ i7-13620H (2.40 GHz)

      NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU

Driver version:	32.0.15.9597
Driver date:	17. 3. 2026
DirectX version:	12 (FL 12.2)

UECC-20260409.11688.W-268324-D6D63F224D5B400DB387A79A0EF7E4B4_0000.zip (390.8 KB)

2

Hey there, welcome to the inZOI forum!

I noticed that your driver date is 17.3.2026, even though the newest NVIDIA Game Ready Driver released on 24.3.2026. Can you please check if this update is available for your setup?

3

Yes, I have this version installed, not sure why it says 17. 3. 2026 in the previous message.

This is what my NVIDIA app shows me: Up-to-date, Version 595.97 - Released Tue Mar 24, 2026.

So the driver should be okay.

screenshot
screenshot1936×309 20.4 KB

4

Alright, that’s the latest one. Thanks for the clarification. Just wanted to make sure that’s not part of the issue :grinning_face:

Can you try to verify the game files via the Steam settings for inZOI? If you haven’t done this before, here’s a short guide: How to verify your game viles via steam

5

It’s quite possible that character creation mods still affect the animation during interactions, and that’s what’s causing the issues. Especially if it’s about modifying body shape rather than just custom clothing or hairstyles. And disabling mods might not completely remove them from the game either.

There were some instructions posted here about ways to completely remove modifications, try the instructions from there.

6

Sorry for the late reply, it got lost in my e-mail.

I updated my drivers, I had a new update for GeForce Game Ready Driver (version 596.36). After the install was complete I restarted my laptop.

Then I validated my game files: successfully validated.

I opened the game again and I tried changing the relationship status in game to BFF. The game crashed my PC and restarted with the standard message: “Your PC ran into a problem”…

The issue unfortunately still persist.

7

Hello,

Honestly, I have a feeling this might be less of a relationship-system bug and more of a GPU / DX12 instability issue being triggered during those interactions. The biggest red flag to me is the BSOD and the DirectX warning afterwards, because that usually points to the graphics driver crashing rather than only the game itself.

One thing I haven’t seen suggested yet is:

  • forcing the game to use only the RTX 4060 in Windows/NVIDIA settings

  • disabling Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling

  • clearing the DirectX shader cache: UE5 shader corruption can survive reinstalls.

    Try deleting:

    • %localappdata%\D3DSCache

    • %localappdata%\NVIDIA\DXCache

    • %localappdata%\inZOI\Saved\DerivedDataCache

    Then reboot.

  • updating the laptop BIOS

UE5 games can get really weird with shader compilation and hybrid laptop GPUs, especially on 13th gen Intel systems. Relationship interactions might just be the thing triggering the instability.

8

I’ve seen another user ( link: Screen goes black when choosing relationship status ) having the exact same issue as me on this forum – also exactly after relationship change. If it happens to multiple people triggered by the same action in the game, it seems likely that this is a bug rather than an isolated system issue. The outcome for both of us is the same too, restart of our devices.

I have a newer machine than the person reporting the issue in the link above. The only similarities I see are that we are both using NVIDIA GeForce RTX models but I don’t think that in itself reveals much.

Would uploading more crash reports help identify the issue better?

Thanks for the suggestions, I will try to follow the step you provided. I will keep you updated.

9

I think commenting on the other bug reports related to this issue and liking the comments will give the posts relevancy to potentially be picked up by the devs, but I would also send the report via support from the official website. This seems like a serious bug indeed, so I hope they take a good look at it.

10

Here’s my update, I’ve done these things:

  • forcing the game to use only the RTX 4060 in Windows/NVIDIA settings :white_check_mark:
  • disabling Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling :white_check_mark:
  • clearing the DirectX shader cache: UE5 shader corruption can survive reinstalls :white_check_mark:

I’ve updated my drivers again and tried the latest game update. It unfortunately hasn’t fixed my issue. After changing the relationship status to BFF it crashed again (but no blue screen this time – can be important to note).

The only thing I haven’t done so far is updating the BIOS, that felt like a too big of a step if it’s potentially not a firmware issue but an in-game issue.

Your suggestion to report it via support from the official website makes perfect sense, however I’m not sure if I know where to find that. Can you direct me to a link where to report that? Or do I do that via Steam or some other platform?

Thank you.

(EDIT: I found another related post on here Hard System crash on relationship action — RTX 4060 laptop (Win11))

EDIT 2:
I ended up updating my BIOS too, to the latest version downloaded from the official MSI website. I just tested the game gain and it still keeps crashing after relationship change.