This happens to me when playing the game at a resolution higher than 1920x1080 (e.g. 4K or 1440p). Best way to exit the game at 4K then is to open the stats screen which instantly crashes the game to desktop and this does not affect saves (I finished the whole game using this method).

Thanks buddy.

I'm playing in 1080p and have the same issue. The Stats screen works fine for me though ._.

I don't have a fix for the issue, but there's a way to kill the application "easily" if it does hang. (This works for dealing with any fullscreen program that's prone to hanging, as long as Windows is still responding when it does.)
First, make sure Windows Task Manager has the "Always on top" option set -- this will literally make the Task Manager window always appear in front of everything else while it's open, as long as it's not minimized. Now if the game hangs, as long as the system isn't completely locked up, you can use Ctrl + Shift + Esc to directly open Task Manager (at least in Windows 8; it's possible the shortcut might be different in later editions) and kill the unresponsive application if necessary.

thanks, but it didn't work. If I press Ctrl + Shift + Esc (also usually my go-to), nothing happens at all. The game completely freezes my PC except for Ctrl + Alt + Del. Appreciate the input, though

EDIT: I just tried it normally during the game and it seems that the game itself is completely blocking the Task Manager. It's beyond me how this is acceptable but well, here we are

If you mean blocking it visually...that's why I said you need to have Task Manager's "always on top" option turned on -- otherwise, yeah, even if it's running, it'll be stuck behind the frozen game window. ;)

The crash is confirmed on screens mentioned in this thread when Exit to Windows even though on 1920x1080, my workaround is to Exit to Windows while on the in game menu list after pressing ESC (Back out from other screens). The game will exit smoothly to the desktop without issues (confirmed and tested)

Edit:Typo