Deadlock has been frequently causing my PC to BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) forcing a restart of the entire system ever since the latest large update (03-25-2026). So far this has only occurred while the Rendering option was set to Direct3D 11 (-dx11) and has since stopped upon changing it to Vulkan.
While on Dx11, there is a very high chance a BSOD occurs while the game preloads shaders shortly after startup, about a 50% chance. Even if the game successfully preloads shaders without crashing, it will still often BSOD later during gameplay or while transitioning scenes. I could sometimes get a few matches in before a BSOD.
I tried a variety of other graphic settings but they resulted in no improvement. I reinstalled the game completely two times, and on different drives, and this did improve stability for a short while but the game would seemingly degrade and start to crash more frequently the more times it was played on that installation.
The only thing that fixed the issue was switching to Vulkan and it has not caused a BSOD since. Although the frame rate is a little more jerky with Vulkan on my system, at least it doesn't crash the entire PC.
I'll also note that my system has only BSOD'd while Deadlock was running on Dx11, and no other games or apps have caused a BSOD recently.
Prior to the 03-25-2026 update, the game was far more stable on Dx11. A few BSODs occurred while Deadlock was running on Dx11 in the past, about two or three times over the course of several weeks, but I did not attribute it to Deadlock at the time because it was rare and I assumed it was an issue with my system or overclock settings. I have since removed all overclock settings and went to defaults while troubleshooting this issue but it still results in frequent BSODs on Dx11 currently.
My Specs:
Win 10 64 bit
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
Nvidia RTX 2080 ti (595.97 latest drivers)
64 GB DDR 4 ram
While on Dx11, there is a very high chance a BSOD occurs while the game preloads shaders shortly after startup, about a 50% chance. Even if the game successfully preloads shaders without crashing, it will still often BSOD later during gameplay or while transitioning scenes. I could sometimes get a few matches in before a BSOD.
I tried a variety of other graphic settings but they resulted in no improvement. I reinstalled the game completely two times, and on different drives, and this did improve stability for a short while but the game would seemingly degrade and start to crash more frequently the more times it was played on that installation.
The only thing that fixed the issue was switching to Vulkan and it has not caused a BSOD since. Although the frame rate is a little more jerky with Vulkan on my system, at least it doesn't crash the entire PC.
I'll also note that my system has only BSOD'd while Deadlock was running on Dx11, and no other games or apps have caused a BSOD recently.
Prior to the 03-25-2026 update, the game was far more stable on Dx11. A few BSODs occurred while Deadlock was running on Dx11 in the past, about two or three times over the course of several weeks, but I did not attribute it to Deadlock at the time because it was rare and I assumed it was an issue with my system or overclock settings. I have since removed all overclock settings and went to defaults while troubleshooting this issue but it still results in frequent BSODs on Dx11 currently.
My Specs:
Win 10 64 bit
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
Nvidia RTX 2080 ti (595.97 latest drivers)
64 GB DDR 4 ram
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