Microsoft traces August 2026 Windows update game crashes to RGB lighting drivers

Games failing after August updates

Microsoft has confirmed a known issue affecting games on systems that installed the August 2026 Windows updates. In a message on its Windows release health dashboard, the company said it received reports of games failing to run as expected following the release of KB5121003 on August 11, 2026 and later cumulative updates.

According to BleepingComputer, affected titles include ARC Raiders, MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and The Finals, running on Windows 11 versions 24H2 and 25H2. Beyond games refusing to launch, users have reported gaming freezes, EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION errors and, in some cases, unexpected system restarts.

RGB lighting flagged as the likely trigger

Microsoft first confirmed it was investigating midweek and followed up a day later with a more specific theory. Its ongoing investigation, the company said, points to peripherals or internal device components with RGB lighting features. Such devices may install drivers or code components with file names similar to inpoutx64, and on systems where those drivers are present, the failure is triggered by launching certain games.

Microsoft added that it is still working to understand the relationship between these RGB-related components and the specific games that trip the issue, and that it will share more information when it becomes available. No permanent fix or timeline has been announced so far.

Embark Studios offers a manual workaround

Embark Studios, the Swedish developer behind ARC Raiders and The Finals, has gone further than Microsoft in pinpointing the fault. According to the studio, the crashes are tied to the file inpoutx64.sys and stem from changes made with the Windows update affecting that kernel driver.

Until Microsoft ships an official fix, Embark shared a multi-step temporary workaround that involves deleting the associated service and removing the inpoutx64 file from the Windows drivers folder. Because the procedure touches system-level files, users should follow the developer's published instructions closely rather than deleting drivers indiscriminately.

A recurring pattern for Windows gaming

As BleepingComputer notes, this is not the first time a Windows update has destabilised games. In October 2024, Microsoft blocked upgrades to Windows 11 24H2 that were causing Asphalt 8 crashes and Easy Anti-Cheat blue screens. In January 2025, it lifted a compatibility hold after fixing an Auto HDR bug that broke some games. It has also previously removed upgrade blocks that had kept players of Asphalt 8: Airborne, Assassin's Creed, Star Wars Outlaws and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora from moving to the latest Windows version.

Why it matters

The incident shows how a routine cumulative update can ripple through the PC gaming ecosystem when it collides with old or loosely maintained kernel drivers. RGB peripherals are ubiquitous among PC gamers, and the vendors behind them often rely on shared legacy driver components to control lighting hardware. When Microsoft changes how the kernel handles those components, the fallout can surface as crashes in games that look, to the player, like the game's own bug.

Until Microsoft delivers a fix, affected users must choose between broken games and manually removing a driver from their system, neither of which is appealing. For studios such as Embark, publishing workarounds for an operating-system defect is unpaid support work that pulls resources away from development. It is also a useful diagnostic hint for anyone whose games suddenly started crashing this month: the culprit may be the lighting software bundled with a keyboard, mouse or fan controller rather than anything the game itself did.