Intel has acknowledged that its Arc Alchemist GPUs, some of the best graphics cards, are having severe issues running Bethesda's new space RPG Starfield — precisely trouble launching the game. According to Intel, a driver update will be ready for the game's release next week on September 5 to fix these issues. Still, sadly, this means there won't be any immediate support during the remainder of Starfield's early access period.
Problems running Starfield on Arc graphics cards are as bad as it gets. One problem is that Intel has still not released a game-ready driver update supporting Starfield — unlike Nvidia and AMD. Even worse, according to several responses on Intel's post, the game won't even start on current Arc drivers, making the game completely unplayable on Intel's discrete GPUs.
We are aware of issues with @StarfieldGame on Intel Arc graphics. We are working to improve the experience for the game's general release next week.August 31, 2023
The most surprising aspect of this situation is that Intel completely neglected to release a game-ready driver in time for Starfield, arguably one of the most hyped-up games of 2023 and one of the biggest releases of 2023. We suspect that Intel was working on a driver for Starfield, but it probably broke right before the game's release due to game updates.
This wouldn't be the first time something like this happened. Intel had encountered this problem a few times with previous game releases where its game-ready drivers broke at the very last minute when the game released a launch-day patch to iron out bugs and optimize the game. This would make sense in Starfield's case because a massive 15GB patch went live a few days ago, right before the game's release, which could have broken Intel's driver update it was potentially working on.
Intel has made vast strides in improving its driver support and optimizations over the past year. However, Intel's driver maturity still has a ways to go before it matches Nvidia or AMD's counterparts. Fortunately, Intel will have a driver ready for Starfield's full release on September 5.