Monster Hunter Rise arrived this past week on PC following a lengthy tenure of exclusivity on the Nintendo Switch. It's one of the biggest releases of January for the platform and a game Monster Hunter fans have been looking forward to for a very long time. Yet Monster Hunter Rise's PC launch has proven to be a major disappointment for some of the franchise's biggest fans. That's because a major glitch, an error reading "Failed to Save," is preventing many Monster Hunter Rise buyers from even starting the game.
The error is straightforward in its presentation. Monster Hunter Rise players can install the game and start it up like normal, but when accepting a prompt stating that "No save data exists. Create a new save data file?" an error reading "Failed to Save" keeps players from progressing any further. Without being able to create a save file, Monster Hunter Rise can't be started. In other words, Monster Hunter Rise players have no access to the game that they purchased.
A thread on Monster Hunter Rise's official Steam discussion page shows that the problem is unfortunately widespread. There are over 850 comments among Monster Hunter Rise purchasers discussing the error. Unfortunately, none of the commenters appear to have found a fix for the problem. The vast majority of posts are simply confirming that they've experienced the Failed to Save error and hope that Capcom can fix Monster Hunter Rise soon.
One person in the Steam discussion posted what they claim is an email from Valve looking into the issue. The email asks the user to create and send Valve a log detailing what's happening as the error occurs. While it's unclear if the email is authentic, if it is, it means both Valve and Capcom are investigating the issue.
Capcom has made an official post on Monster Hunter Rise's Steam community hub recommending players try several things to attempt to fix the error. These recommendations include reconfiguring the game's controller button configuration, disabling Steam Cloud, re-downloading the game, deleting save data, and even rebooting the user's PC. It's clear Capcom isn't entirely sure what the problem is just yet.
Obviously, this isn't a situation that anyone wants to deal with. Monster Hunter Rise is a full-priced $59.99 video game and the number of buyers who can't access the game is substantial. It's just an unfortunate truth that Capcom PC ports routinely launch with serious technical issues. Here's hoping a solution can be found quickly.
Monster Hunter Rise is available now on PC and Switch.