It’s 2024 and Star Citizen is nowhere near its full release. Cloud Imperium Games, the studio behind the game, is still developing the alpha with the latest 3.23 “Adventure Beckons” update, adding in support for Nvidia DLSS and AMD FSR. Star Citizen has also seen a surge in interest, thanks to the game being free to play until May 29. Unfortunately, some players have reported facing an infinite loading screen, which they want to get rid of ASAP. Well, if you too are encountering the same problem, consider reading this guide for workarounds.
This particular issue has plagued Star Citizen for quite some time. The developers know about this issue and have shared that this problem mostly occurs after logging out in a ship’s bed, when you have trouble forming a party, or after leaving Persistent Universe while you are in a party. Regardless of the cause here, this issue needs to be fixed. So, without much further ado, let’s go ahead and find out all possible fixes for this.
Star Citizen Infinite Loading Screen (2024): How to fix it
Here are a few workarounds that will be of help in resolving this issue. Included are some player-suggested fixes and devs-recommended ones too.
Have your friend destroy your ship (dev recommended workaround) –
As we stated earlier, the devs are indeed aware of this issue. They have even gone so far as to share some workarounds for players to try. Basically, if you were playing the game with a friend and quit while being on board a ship, then you can have your friend destroy that ship if it’s still in there. Once your friend has destroyed the ship, see if the issue persists. In case it does switch to another workaround.
Perform a Character repair –
The devs have suggested this as a “possible” fix. However, doing a character repair is a nuclear option and should only be done if you are comfortable with it. It’s an irreversible step and all equipment and items lost during character repair will not be recoverable. Now, to do a character repair, all you need to do is to head to the RSI website, and log in to your account. Next, navigate to Settings and select Character Repair in there. Now complete all the required steps there. It’s important to note that RSI recommends waiting an hour before logging back into the game, so do that.
Switch to a different region and then log out –
This is somewhat of an old workaround, but we still suggest giving it a try. As stated here, what you need to do is to switch to a server located in a different region. After that, move your character or ship a thousand meters or so from where you were stuck. Now, log out from the game and choose “Best” in the server selection screen.
Switch to Arena Commander –
This is another player-suggested workaround that you can try. In this one, you will need to first let the loading screen go on until you are kicked by the game to the main menu. After that happens, go to Arena Commander and play one game there. Once that’s over, switch back to PU (persistent universe) and you should be able to join the game.
Relaunch –
Simply relaunching the game can also be a quick way of dealing with this issue. Just press Alt+F4 and then relaunch Star Citizen. Additionally, you can also try restarting/rebooting your PC and see if that helps.
Kill your character in Arena Commander –
One player suggested killing your character in Arena Commander and then promptly exiting to the main menu without respawning. Now, this is a strange workaround for sure, but we suggest trying it out once.
Join on friends –
As stated here, players can also use the Join Friends feature to resolve this issue. Essentially, you have to ask your in-game friends to form a group and invite you. Accept the invite and that should make the game let you join.
Delete user and shader folder –
This user got around this issue by simply deleting the user and shader folder. For that, you can type in %localappdata%\star citizen\ on your file explorer and that will get you to the game’s installation folder. Find both the user and shader folders in there and delete them. Now, launch Star Citizen, and hopefully, the issue will be there no more.
Well, that’s all the workarounds we have for this issue. You can also take a quick look here if you want to know how to deal with error code 60016 in Star Citizen. And for more interesting guides like this, keep following DigiStatement. Also read: Star Citizen stuck on splash screen: How to fix it?
