Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is Sandfall Interactive’s debut title, and it is out now on PC and consoles. The Unreal Engine 5 release looks fantastic, and while the performance could be a bit better, there are still plenty of settings to adjust to improve your experience.
That said, if Clair Obscur Expedition 33 is crashing for you at launch or after the benchmark message, here is how you can fix that on PC.
Fix the Clair Obscur Expedition 33 Crash at Launch
A lot of Steam users are reporting that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 crashes as soon as they launch the game, or after the initial benchmark prompt. Usually, I’d attribute this to broken files or missing redistributable on the user’s end, but apparently, it has something to do with the Steam Overlay.
Update:The developers havedeployed a patchto specifically address this crash. You can now safely disable Steam Overlay if you want.
Enable Steam Overlay
For some reason, if you have Steam Overlay disabled (I don’t know why you would), then Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 crashes a few seconds into its launch. I’m not sure why this is happening, but there is likely a check that requires Steam Overlay to be enabled. Here is how you can enable that:
You can also enable it specifically for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 if you don’t want to enable it at a global level.
The game should work fine after this. Again, I’m not sure why this works, but I’ve read the response of at least 50 people confirming on Steam forums that this was the culprit.
Verify Game Files
As an added measure, I recommend verifying the game files as well. This took a while for me to unpack, so it’s possible something went wrong during that process for you.
Generic Troubleshooting
Apart from that, you may try the following generic troubleshooting suggestions.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is one of the highest-rated releases of 2025, and it’s shaping up to be a solid GOTY contender. The PC version needs a bit more work to be in its best possible state, especially when it comes to certain resolution issues, but it’s still better than a lot of Unreal Engine 5 releases.
Ali Hashmi
Ali has been writing about video games for the past six years and is always on the lookout for the next indie game to obsess over and recommend to everyone in sight. When he isn’t spending an unhealthy amount of time in Slay the Spire, he’s probably trying out yet another retro-shooter or playing Dark Souls for the 50th time.
