CoD Black Ops Cold War won't launch on PC: How to launch Black Ops Cold War in DirectX 11 instead of 12

It’s only been a few weeks since the launch of ‘Cold War’, and while the campaign, multiplayer and zombie modes have been a fun time for many, a small few have been experiencing some issues specific to the PC version.

The PC version usually has a plethora of options that one can use to get the best out of their setup, from their chosen GPU to the CPU.

However, it looks as though users have been experiencing issues in launching the game in DirectX 12.

With that, here’s how to launch the game in DirectX 11 so you can get back to the Campaign.

A Cold Boot

When a game launches on a PC, it loads up many libraries that generate the graphics, the physics, the music, everything.

With a PC, there are a few graphics implementations that is used, such as DirectX. This is a library of API (Application Programming Interfaces) that can help load many routines for a game.

It’s a library that’s been in use for the last twenty-five years, with its latest version of DirectX 12, called ‘Ultimate Edition’, bringing coherency to what the Xbox Series S/X is bringing to its games.

However, this 12th version looks to be crashing ‘Cold War’, possibly due to a bug. This is where the graphics options come in.

READ MORE: COD Cold War; How to fix error ‘Negative 345 Blazing Gator’.

How to fix

There is a very straightforward method to launch the game in an earlier version of DirectX.

1. Launch the Battle.net application.

1. Select ‘Call of Duty: BOCW’.
2. Press ’Options’ at the top, then ‘Game Settings’.
3. Where it says the line ‘Additional command line arguments’, type in ‘-d3d11’.
4. Press ’Done’, and launch the game.

You should now be able to launch the game with an earlier DirectX version, and be able to pick up where you previously left it.

This is most likely a human-error which can be fixed quickly, so for the meantime, a DirectX 11 ‘Cold War’ will be needed.

READ MORE: COD Cold War; How to fix error ‘Yorker 43’.