It’s been over a week since Sid Meier’s Civilization VII – VR (2025) launched on Quest 3, and although developer PlaySide Studios has issued a performance update following its April 9th release, players are still struggling with poor performance and crashes of the $60 VR port.
Developed by PlaySide Studios in partnership with original developer Firaxis Games, Civilization VII – VR brought the sprawling real-time strategy game to VR for the first time, including both solo and online multiplayer matches with other Quest 3 and 3S players.
Things didn’t go off without a hitch though when the game launched earlier this month, with many users initially reporting persistent stuttering issues when using the game’s war table both in virtual and mixed reality modes.
An update released on April 11th was aimed at fixing “some of the performance issues,” the studio said in a reply to a Horizon Store user review, although the game is still apparently not out of the woods just yet.
Some of the most recent user reviews mention continued issues with stuttering when playing in VR mode, although there are also now numerous reports of the game crashing both during gameplay and upon startup.
“We’re aware that some players are experiencing crashing with Civilization VII – VR and we’re currently investigating,” the studio said on Monday via its official Discord (invite link).
While Firaxis suggests contacting support, the tide of complaints hasn’t come to an end, garnering the Civ VII Quest 3 port an accumulative user rating of [2.8/5] on the Horizon Store. Worryingly, the game has only managed to attract around 200 user reviews at the time of this writing.
Firaxis says in a Discord news announcement it’s going to release more info “ASAP,” however with no update log available, or public roadmap of issues currently being fixed, there’s no telling what to expect and when. That said, it’s difficult to tell whether it’s entirely a VR-specific issue at this point.
Civilization VII has similarly received ‘Mixed’ user reviews of the non-VR version via Steam, some which stem from initial performance issues, and others based on expectations incumbent upon its $70 price tag. Others, such as PC Gamer’s Nick Evanson, found the non-VR’s late game too CPU intensive for many PC rigs shortly after it was released.
We’ve reached out to developer PlaySide Studios for comment on this issue, and will update as soon as we hear back.
