Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 crashing on intro cutscene, but there are some potential workarounds

Many gamers who’ve got their hands on Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 have had their excitement cut-short due to a bug that’s causing the game to crash. According to reports on Steam, Reddit, and X, players aren’t able to get past the game’s first cutscene as it simply freezes up and throws a pop-up message saying “the application has crashed.”

The problem manifests as severe lag, freezing, and ultimately a crash during the first cutscene, which features Tyranid drop pods. The issue appears to affect players across various hardware configurations, including high-end systems with powerful processors and graphics cards.

One user described their experience: “Doesn’t matter what my settings are, I don’t get past the first couple of Tyranid drop pods. It’s just sounds after that.” This sentiment is echoed by many others who have been unable to progress in the game.

The crashes aren’t limited to the opening cinematic, with some players reporting similar issues during subsequent cutscenes. In some cases, the game recovers after a delay, but this leads to audio sync problems that significantly impact the gaming experience.

However, it seems some players have discovered a few potential workarounds that stop the game from getting stuck on the opening cutscene. After reading many posts and comments, I noticed that the most recommended workaround was moving the game installation to a Solid State Drive (SSD) to resolve the issue. One player stated, “I have found a solution… you need to install the game on SSD. Literally fixed my issue.” This fix has been corroborated by several others.

Apart from that, some success has been reported by disconnecting from the internet before launching the game. This method allowed certain players to skip the problematic cutscene and start the game proper. Another potential fix is ensuring the game is downloaded on the same drive as the main Steam files has helped some players overcome the crashing problem.

That said, while these workarounds have helped some players resolve the problem, they aren’t guaranteed to work for everyone. You might have to try all three potential fixes to see if either of them help resolve the problem on your end. The developers are yet to acknowledge the problem publicly, so it’s unclear if we’ll see a permanent fix anytime soon. But given the widespread nature of the bug, it’s likely to be resolved sooner rather than later. While we’ll be on the lookout for any further developments, feel free to drop a comment below letting us know if the workarounds helped resolve the problem for you.