Wolfenstein 2 PC, and forcing people to update drivers

[Mondy]

Why is this a thing?

I just tried to launch the game on Nvidia drivers that are only about a month old, and were running the game just fine before this happened. Then I get a message saying my drivers are outdated and need to be updated before I can keep playing.

WHY is this mandatory? Especially for drivers that are working fine? I find this especially grating when there is every chance the up to date drivers are corrupted, so I can't keep on playing the game until Nvidia or AMD fix them up. Bethesda, really getting tired of your shit lately.

 

[Alexalder]

Because the game is broken without those drivers. Well it's broken even with the drivers, there's so much Nvidia can do from their side

 

[shepcommandr]

This is a strange complaint.
It's entirely possible that the game was tested w/the optimized drivers, and they want to limit issues players will have.

 

[Zojirushi]

Wow really? I've never heard of a game that does this. I think Arkham Knight was warning me about outdated drivers but it would still let me enter the game no problem.

 

[impingu1984]

Add +r_disableDriverVersionCheck 1 to launch options to disable the check

 

[DSP]

They need it for Vulkan I guess. Vulkan libraries install with your graphic driver.

 

[Com_Raven]

it is not a very elegant solution, but you would not believe the amount of support requests pc gaming companies get due to issues with outdated drivers. In that sense, forcing players to update is the brute force method of cutting back on these support tickets.

 

[Brau]

Are you sure it's mandatory? I've never seen a game that makes it mandatory.

I'll be pretty disappointed if the game makes me update and I lose the smooth experience i get from the game so far.

 

[Kudo]

Jeez, with how hit and miss the drivers have been after Creators Update they really shouldn't force to install that shit. I get better performance with drivers from January in Destiny.

 

[Mondy]

Jeez, with how hit and miss the drivers have been after Creators Update they really shouldn't force to install that shit. I get better performance with drivers from January in Destiny.

Click to shrink...

Exactly. Release sub par drivers on one hand then publishers cutting people out of the games until they're installed with the other

 

[Evolution of Metal]

You cannot expect developers to test the game on the all of the outdated versions of drivers, it is wasteful and the latest stable drivers should be in the interest of the players. Equally, the game might require features which are only available in the latest drivers.

Battlefield 1 does this too, you cannot launch the game with outdated drivers.

Do you know cases of Nvidia or AMD driver updates corrupting the system? There have been a few negative effects of the new drivers, but nothing which you should worry about.

 

[Leland Palmer]

Add +r_disableDriverVersionCheck 1 to launch options to disable the check

Click to shrink...

Do this OP.

 

[CHC]

It's a very frustrating situation.

In my case, the game was working 100% perfectly with 388.00 (2nd latest version). I updated to 388.13 (latest) as soon as they came out, but it completely broke Wolfesntein II. And I don't use the word "broke" very often - but it broke the game. Alt-tabbing or changing graphical settings was a guaranteed crash, and textures like skyboxes were missing - just black holes in the world that left trailing visual artifacts on my screen.

I did a full DDU wipe and went back to 388.00 and guess what? It's perfect again.

I really hope at some point Nvidia will learn that racing to get the "latest" drivers out is a foolish practice. They aren't necessary for every single major (or even minor) game release. Drivers are a purely utilitarian thing - they aren't exciting and for the most part no one cares about them. Their job is to make a piece of hardware work optimally - that's it. Rushing out new ones constantly at the expense of stability - especially stability in very recently released games - is a great way to really piss people off.

 

[Arx]

Nvidias driver quality has taken a nosedive in the past years unfortunately. They used to be really good but ever since W10 was released they can't hold their old level anymore.