Amazon's New World Graphics Card Drama Explained
Amazon's upcoming MMO, "New World," has finally entered Closed Beta ahead of its launch on August 31. Unfortunately, some players' graphics cards are allegedly being killed by the game. Players are reporting issues when using an EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 FTW3, a nearly $2,000 graphics card. While certain users can't get into the beta due to heavy server loads, others who have made it through got more than they bargained for.
Across Reddit, Steam, EVGA forums, and the "New World" forums, players have chimed in about the game bricking their RTX 3090s. On the official "New World" forums, a user called Goatz claimed that not only did the game annihilate their RTX 3090, but it's the second time "New World" has claimed one from them. During the game's Alpha, Goatz supposedly had an RTX 3090 fail on them, which EVGA replaced. Fast forward a few months, and Goatz apparently lost another RTX 3090. Goatz went on to say that they haven't had any issues with the graphics cards in the eight months in between, and plugging in their old GTX 980 worked fine while running "New World."
Despite the high number of reports of these specific graphics cards getting fried by "New World," the developer insists there is not an issue.
A rough start for Amazon Games
The number of replies to Goatz' original post shows that this issue seems to be incredibly common with "New World" and the EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 FTW3, to the point that anyone with that graphics card might reconsider playing "New World" at all. Players have reported having their graphics card's fan speed jump to 100% just before the FPS dropped to zero and the game cut to black. The consensus seems to be that there if you hear a popping noise, the card is bricked. If not, it should be bootable, but it may still have suffered damage.
In response to these reports, "New World" official Twitter account put out a statement, saying that the developer has received complaints concerning the game and graphics cards, but that the issue is not as widespread as it seems. This stands in stark contrast to the alarming high number of people saying otherwise.
Since this official announcement, fans have been divided when it comes to discerning the truth of the matter. Some have insisted that they've seen way more reports than "New World" lets on, while others believe that disgruntled gamers are lying about their graphics cards to hurt the game's reputation.
While the jury is out on whether the blame for the problem lies with EVGA or Amazon Game Studios, it's not a great look for a gaming division that has previously been known to have a bit of a shady side.