Star Wars Zero Company Performance Issues & Crashing Fix
Star Wars Zero Company is having some rough performance and stability problems at launch, with players reporting stuttering, low FPS, frame drops, freezes, crashes, texture pop-in, and inconsistent frame times even on powerful PCs. The good news is that there are several fixes worth trying right now, including one graphics setting that has produced unusually large FPS gains for some players. Crashing is a little more complicated, though, because not every performance fix also solves the game's stability problems.
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Performance & Crashing Fixes to Try First
Turn Off Environment Geometry Detail
Fix Stuttering and Frame Drops
Fix Low FPS
Fix CPU Bottlenecks
Fix Crashing and Freezing
Community Performance Fix Mod
Fix Screen Tearing
Star Wars Zero Company Performance & Crashing Fixes to Try First
If you're having both poor performance and crashes, I would test fixes one at a time rather than immediately changing every graphics setting and config file at once.
Start by turning off Environment Geometry Detail, then restart the game and test the same mission or area again. If your average FPS is already decent but the game constantly hitches, cap the frame rate at 60. If you're GPU-limited, enable DLSS, FSR, or XeSS and lower Global Illumination, Reflections, and Shadows. If lowering the resolution barely changes your FPS, focus more on CPU-heavy settings such as Hidden Objects Detail and Effect Quality.
For crashes, make sure the game has completed shader compilation, restart the PC if shader compilation itself crashes, verify that your installation is intact, and pay attention to whether the crash happens randomly or at exactly the same gameplay trigger every time.
That distinction is important. A game running at 35 FPS and a game crashing whenever you perform one specific attack are probably not suffering from the same problem.
Turn Off Environment Geometry Detail
The single graphics setting I'd test first is Environment Geometry Detail.
Go into the graphics options, scroll toward the bottom, and turn Environment Geometry Detail off. Players are reporting surprisingly large performance gains from this one setting compared with lowering the entire graphics preset.
Some players have reported gains of around 20 to 30 FPS, while others saw much larger improvements. One RTX 3080 player reported going from around 30 FPS on Medium to a stable 60 FPS on High after disabling it.
That's why I'd test this before dropping everything else to Low.
The downside is visual quality. Environment Geometry Detail changes the complexity of models in the environment, and turning it off can make curved or detailed objects noticeably more angular. Players have specifically noticed reduced geometry on buildings, planets, machinery, and other environmental objects.
So I wouldn't automatically disable it on a PC already holding your target frame rate. But if Star Wars Zero Company is running badly, this currently looks like one of the highest-impact settings available.
How to Fix Star Wars Zero Company Stuttering and Frame Drops
One of the biggest complaints with Zero Company isn't necessarily low average FPS. It's bad frame pacing.
You can be sitting at a seemingly respectable frame rate and still get obvious microstutters when rotating the camera, entering another part of the map, transitioning into a cutscene, or reaching the beginning of a mission.
Players with hardware as powerful as an RTX 5080 or 5090 paired with high-end X3D processors are still reporting these hitches, so don't immediately assume your GPU isn't strong enough.
My first test would be a 60 FPS cap.
Players monitoring frame times have reported much more erratic frame pacing while running uncapped. Since Zero Company is a turn-based tactics game, I would rather have a consistent 60 than a frame rate bouncing well above 100 while the frame-time graph is constantly spiking.
If the in-game frame limiter doesn't help, an external limiter such as RivaTuner Statistics Server or Special K has been suggested by players as an alternative.
Frame Generation can make motion look smoother, and the extra latency isn't a huge concern in this type of game, but it shouldn't be treated as a true stutter fix. Frame Generation inserts additional frames; it doesn't remove an underlying CPU hitch or traversal stutter.
If your FPS counter is high but the game still feels rough, frame pacing is probably the thing you should be troubleshooting rather than chasing an even higher average FPS number.
How to Fix Low FPS in Star Wars Zero Company
If your GPU is actually being pushed close to 100%, then conventional graphics changes become much more useful.
Start by enabling the appropriate upscaler for your graphics card. Nvidia users should generally use DLSS, AMD users can use FSR, and Intel users have XeSS available.
For a starting point, I'd use Quality at 1080p, Balanced at 1440p, and Performance at 4K if you need a meaningful FPS increase. You can always move one level toward quality afterward if you have extra headroom.
After that, lower the expensive lighting options before destroying Texture Quality.
Global Illumination can be particularly demanding because High and Ultra use more expensive lighting techniques. Reflections can also be costly, especially given how many metallic and reflective environments Zero Company has. Medium is a much better performance target for both settings on mid-range hardware.
Shadow Quality is another sensible option to reduce, while View Distance is an easy cut because most tactical maps don't require extremely high distant-object detail.
I wouldn't immediately put Textures on Low unless you're actually running into a VRAM limitation. Texture resolution and raw rendering performance aren't the same thing, and lowering Texture Quality won't magically fix a CPU bottleneck.
Low Settings Not Helping? You May Be CPU Limited
If you switch from 1440p to 1080p, lower the entire graphics preset, and your FPS barely changes, that's a major clue that your GPU isn't the primary limitation.
This behavior is being reported by Zero Company players, including cases where 1080p Low and 1440p Medium produce almost the same frame rate.
Zero Company can put substantial load on the CPU, particularly around mission starts, cutscenes, world simulation, and areas such as the Den. IGN also observed situations where CPU load remained relatively high while GPU utilization sat well below full usage, even on extremely powerful systems.
For CPU-limited performance, I'd lower Hidden Objects Detail first. That setting controls complexity for objects the game is tracking even when they aren't currently visible.
Effect Quality is another setting worth reducing because explosions, debris, blaster effects, and similar effects can add processor overhead.
This is also why blindly selecting Low may not fix anything. If the game's main thread or another CPU workload is the bottleneck, stripping away GPU-heavy visual settings can leave you with uglier graphics and nearly identical FPS.
How to Fix Star Wars Zero Company Crashing and Freezing
Crashing appears to be a separate issue from poor performance in many cases.
Players have reported crashes during missions, character creation, shader compilation, mission transitions, and even specific attacks. Freezes during enemy turns and complete lockups have also been reported.
Most importantly, some of these problems are happening on extremely powerful PCs. If Zero Company is the only game crashing on your system, don't assume a hardware upgrade is the answer.
If the game crashes while compiling shaders, restart your PC and launch it again. At least some players who crashed during the initial shader compilation were able to complete it successfully after restarting.
I would also verify the game installation through Steam or whichever launcher you're using. A damaged or incomplete game file can cause crashes independently of the broader launch-day optimization problems.
Make sure Zero Company is fully updated as well. Bit Reactor has already been addressing technical issues around launch, so running an older build makes troubleshooting much harder.
GPU drivers are worth checking, but I wouldn't repeatedly reinstall them if you're already on a stable recent driver and every other game works normally. Players have reported Zero Company crashes and stutters on both current and older Nvidia drivers, so drivers clearly aren't the whole story.
If the Game Crashes at the Same Exact Point
Pay attention to whether the crash is repeatable.
Some players have reported particular attacks, mission actions, character-creation sequences, or progression steps causing the game to crash every time they repeat the same sequence.
If that happens, stop treating it like random instability.
Try changing the exact action causing the crash. Use another Operator, kill the enemy with a different attack, approach the objective in another order, or restart the mission and avoid reproducing the same sequence.
That's obviously not an ideal permanent fix, but if one specific gameplay trigger crashes while the rest of the mission works, lowering Shadows another level probably isn't going to solve it.
Repeatable gameplay crashes are much more likely to need a game update than another FPS tweak.
Performance Fixes Don't Necessarily Stop Crashes
This is probably the most important distinction in the entire guide.
Environment Geometry Detail has fixed severe FPS problems for a lot of players, but there are reports from people who gained substantial performance and continued crashing anyway.
The same applies to upscaling, Frame Generation, and lowering settings. Those changes reduce rendering workload. They don't necessarily fix whatever logic, memory, shader, or gameplay bug is causing a hard crash.
So if your game goes from 35 FPS to 60 FPS but still crashes during the exact same mission event, don't keep lowering graphics settings expecting the crash to disappear.
Try the Community Performance Fix Mod
If normal graphics settings don't solve the stuttering or low FPS, there is also an unofficial community configuration fix available for PC.
You can download the Star Wars Zero Company performance fix on Nexus Mods. The mod currently includes separate configuration files depending on whether you're using VRR or a non-VRR display.
This is not an official Bit Reactor patch, so I'd back up anything you replace and follow the latest instructions on the Nexus page in case the setup changes.
Launch Zero Company at least once first, then close it. The configuration folder should be located at:
C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\SWZeroCompany\Saved\Config\Windows
Place the correct configuration file into that folder and set it to Read-only according to the current mod instructions so the game doesn't immediately overwrite it.
Then relaunch the game and test the same scene, mission, or camera movement that was previously causing problems.
Player results have been impressive in some cases. Reports include significantly higher FPS, lower GPU usage, improved frame times, and drastically reduced stuttering. One player reported moving from the mid-teens to at least a capped 30 FPS while GPU utilization fell from roughly 99% into the 60–70% range. Others reported reaching a stable 60 FPS.
It isn't universal. At least one player reported much higher FPS but worse stuttering after installing the configuration. If that happens, restore your original config rather than assuming the larger FPS number means the game is actually running better.
I would use this after trying the normal in-game settings, not as the first fix.
Should You Delete the Star Wars Zero Company Cache?
Some players using the community configuration fix have also deleted cache files under the game's Saved directory when troubleshooting.
I would be careful here.
The broader Saved folder can contain more than disposable cache data, so don't blindly delete the entire directory. If a current troubleshooting guide or mod specifically identifies a cache folder or individual temporary files, back up your data first and only remove exactly what you're intending to reset.
I don't think nuking the entire Saved directory is worth the risk just to troubleshoot FPS.
How to Fix Screen Tearing
Screen tearing has also been reported even with V-Sync enabled.
On PC, try switching the display mode to Fullscreen rather than Borderless. Some players have reported that synchronization behaves differently in Borderless and that manually reapplying Fullscreen fixes tearing.
There are also reports that Zero Company can effectively revert to Borderless after restarting, even when the menu still appears to show Fullscreen correctly. If tearing comes back after relaunching, toggle the display mode and apply Fullscreen again.
Another option is to let your GPU driver control synchronization. Some Nvidia players have had success disabling the in-game V-Sync and limiter, then enabling V-Sync and an FPS cap through the driver instead.
This isn't guaranteed. Other players continue to report tearing despite experimenting with those settings, and similar tearing has been reported on consoles, so there may also be game-level problems involved.
Star Wars Zero Company Crashing on PS5 or Xbox
PC isn't the only platform seeing technical problems. Players have also reported crashes, frame locking, texture-loading issues, tearing, and control-response problems on PS5 and Xbox Series consoles.
Most of the PC-specific fixes in this guide obviously won't apply there. You can't replace config files or install the Nexus performance mod on console.
If you're getting a repeatable console crash, I'd still apply the same basic logic: update the game, restart the console, completely close and relaunch Zero Company, and test whether changing the exact gameplay action avoids the crash.
If a particular mission action crashes repeatedly regardless of graphics mode, that's likely something that needs to be corrected in a game patch rather than something you can solve through the console graphics menu.
Best Order to Fix Star Wars Zero Company Performance Issues
If I were troubleshooting Star Wars Zero Company right now, I'd start with Environment Geometry Detail because it has produced some of the largest reported FPS gains with one change.
Next, I'd cap the game at 60 FPS if the real problem is stuttering rather than average frame rate. If the GPU is maxed out, I'd enable DLSS, FSR, or XeSS and lower Global Illumination, Reflections, Shadows, and View Distance.
If lowering the resolution barely changes anything, I'd stop attacking GPU settings and lower Hidden Objects Detail and Effect Quality instead.
For crashes, I'd restart after a failed shader compilation, verify the game's files, make sure Zero Company is updated, and determine whether the crash is random or tied to one exact action. If it's repeatable, changing that action may be the only short-term workaround until Bit Reactor patches the trigger.
Finally, PC players who still have severe stuttering or low FPS can try the community Nexus config fix. The early results are strong enough that it's worth knowing about, but because it's an unofficial modification, I'd still exhaust the normal settings first.
The main thing I wouldn't do is assume every Zero Company technical issue is caused by weak hardware. Players with high-end CPUs and GPUs are reporting the same stutters, freezes, and crashes, which strongly suggests at least some of these problems need fixes on the game side rather than another graphics-card upgrade.
