1 day later and a lot of research in the Steam & Crate forums shows many players with this issue and no real fix/solution.

It just happened again 2 more times--but there's a slight improvement. Instead of locking up the computer solid-- black screen, no response from keyboard. or mouse, nada; the windows key works, now you can end the app and a crash report dialog shows up.

I was going to ask for a refund but it really is a great game so I'll hang onto it wait for a fix.

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Great game but this past week it's frozen the computer solid 5 times now. I have to do a hard reset. Doesn't seem to matter if I choose exit to menu or exit to desktop. It's inconsistent/ Played all morning & exited a couple times no problem and now, BLAM!

Had been working perfectly for the previous week when I got it.

Drivers are up to date. No new hardware has been installed.

No other apps are running except the anti-malware

I'm not having issues with any of the other games I play.

Any ideas as to cause & fix?

Hmm, came to the forum for a different reason, but tell me this...

Are you stuck on a black screen when trying to return to the menu? Because that's what one of my PCs does, too.
(The OS is still alive though. The mouse cursor switches between the Grim Dawn hand and OS Arrow, but nothing else can be done than to power down)

Was typing my update just now and didn't see yours, heh. Yes on game exit but it doesn't matter whether it's to the game menu or to the desktop. Black screen, yup but no input, no cursor, no response at all. Only a hard reboot worked.

A suggestion was to use windowed borderless so I tried that--no joy. Game still crashed but now at least, the desktop functions again. The first crash today was after 3+ hours of play. The 2nd one was after an hour or so.

We'll probably see a fix soon tm, since a bunch of people are complaining both in the Steam forum and the Crate (devs) forum.

Do you use Galaxy client? I have suspicion that it might be connected with save-file synching (game updates save file upon exiting and it might go wrong with synching processes).

I know you're not asking me, anyway I don't :P

No I don't use it. I already have Steam for an online service, Over in the Steam forums the first suggestion is to turn off cloud saving but that doesn't apply here. The GOG ver. doesn't have the option at all.

Just played for another 2 hours and exited fine.

I don't remember, haven't even started this morning yet (it's 0500 local) Coffee inc! ...and the answer is nope!

My SOP is to turn off (while gaming) anything that phones home-- not from paranoia but any possible system performance impact.

Welp, lets see what the day brings.

So yesterday (4/3) I played from 0700 to 1300 and then from 1600 to 22:00. Exited w/o a crash in the morning a couple times. In the afternoon again no crashes. But when I went to shut down for the night, Crash. Which was doubly annoying since I had exited at least 6 times prior to that just fine.

Anyway, still able to get to the desktop and end task the game. Restarting picks up right where you left off.

I'm holding off reviewing for the time being. Another hard lockup and the review will go from 5 stars to one.