Nvidia RTX 4000 and 5000 series owners instructed to lower quality settings in Hell is Us demo — Developer urges users to turn down settings and disable DLSS during cinematic intro to resolve crashing issue

The developers behind the demanding new open-world adventure game Hell Is Us have issued a workaround for Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 and RTX 40 users experiencing start-up crashes with their freshly released PC demo. In an update on the Steam page for Hell is Us, the devs suggest ratcheting down the graphics quality settings in the main menu of the demo to get past the cinematic intro, as well as turning off all forms of upscaling. Meanwhile, the Hell is Us team at Rogue Factor promises to continue investigating the problem.

At least 11GB VRAM recommended, needs RTX 4090 for 4K 30fps

Hell is Us already has something of a hardware hog reputation, even though it won’t be released until September 4, 2025. Germany’s PCGH.de notes that the Unreal Engine 5-powered title “requires at least an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 for 4K/UHD at 30 frames per second” (machine translation).

We looked at the official recommended specs and, in terms of GPU muscle and VRAM, gamers are advised to equip an Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti (11GB) or AMD RX 6750 XT (12GB) to enjoy this title, some more fuel for the 8GB VRAM GPU fire. 32GB of system RAM is also a recommended requirement.

The (temporary) workaround

The temporary workaround for those facing crashing issues, shared by the Hell is Us team, is to first reduce all your graphics settings from the main menu and then deactivate all the upscaling features supported by the demo. That means turning off DLSS, XeSS, FSR, and more. See the screenshot above.

Once you have successfully navigated that menu configuration click-fest, seen the cinematic intro, and reached the point where you are in control of main character Rémi, feel free to crank your quality settings back up, say the devs.

Hell Is Us is a single-player action-adventure in a semi-open world with both melee combat and investigatory elements to enjoy. Check out the above video for a few minutes of ‘investigation gameplay.’

Available to pre-order on Steam/PC now, with the title unlocking on September 4, 2025, the game will also be released on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Hopefully, glaring issues like crashing in the intro when played on the PC’s most popular, and some would say the best graphics cards, will be a distant memory by then.

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