Microsoft has begun treating game crash reports following the August 2026 Windows 11 security update, KB5121003, as an investigation item on its official Release Health dashboard. The entry, published at 5:50 PM Pacific Time on August 19 and updated at 6:10 PM, currently shows a status of "Investigating." This means the company is gathering information after seeing signs of user impact, not that it has confirmed the update itself is the cause.
This distinction matters in practice. The issue has moved from scattered user reports to something Microsoft is officially tracking. However, what has been disclosed so far is the scope and symptoms—not the final root cause, a fix release date, or the number of people affected. Any workarounds offered by game developers should also be checked against which specific title they apply to before use.
The August 11 Update and What Microsoft Has Confirmed
KB5121003 is a cumulative security update for Windows 11 versions 24H2 and 25H2, released on August 11. It brings the 24H2 OS build to 26100.9168 and 25H2 to 26200.9168. Release Health lists these two Windows 11 client versions—not server products—as affected.
| Item | What Microsoft Has Disclosed |
|---|---|
| Update | KB5121003 (released August 11, 2026) |
| Affected OS | Windows 11 24H2/25H2 client |
| Affected builds | 26100.9168/26200.9168 |
| Games named | ARC Raiders, MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls, The Finals |
| Symptoms | Freezing, unexpected termination without notification, EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION, unannounced restarts |
| Status | Investigating |
The symptoms listed in the table do not necessarily point to a single shared failure. The EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION error shown in game processes and the device restart events are simply phenomena that Release Health lists together. Microsoft states it is investigating "whether this is a Microsoft-caused issue," but it has not announced a single common cause across all three games.
An "Investigating" status on Release Health means Microsoft has recognized user impact and is gathering information about scope, mitigations, and root cause. This differs from "Confirmed," which follows a more detailed impact review. It has also not reached "Mitigated," where Microsoft provides a workaround, or "Resolved," where a fix is delivered via a KB update. At this stage, the crash reports shouldn't be dismissed, but they also can't be treated as a confirmed update-related bug.
The KB5121003 support page still states that the update includes security enhancements and that Microsoft is not currently aware of any issues with it. This may appear to contradict the Release Health entry, but the two pages serve different purposes. For an ongoing issue, Release Health—which lists items under investigation—serves as the current tracking record. The wording on the support page should not be read as confirmation that no reported issues exist.
ARC Raiders Alone Points to an inpoutx64.sys Pathway
In "ARC Raiders Live Update 1.42.0," released August 18, Embark Studios listed a PC crash related to KB5121003 as a known issue. The company linked to a temporary workaround on its official Discord and said it is working on a fix. The fact that a game developer named the specific update and issued guidance for players represents a distinct, concrete data point separate from Microsoft's investigation entry.
That Discord post points to a relationship between the behavior of inpoutx64.sys after the Windows update and the crashes. However, this is a pathway that Embark identified specifically for players affected in ARC Raiders. It does not serve as evidence that the same file is responsible for the issues Microsoft listed involving MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls or The Finals.
InpOut32/InpOutx64 is a DLL and driver pair that allows user-level programs to directly access hardware ports. According to its distributor, Highresolution Enterprises, the driver is installed the first time the DLL runs. In other words, an outdated driver may have been introduced not by the game itself, but by some separate utility.
The developer has designated this project as legacy and no longer under active support, stating that InpOutx64 has only been tested up to Windows 10 x64. While they believed it would work on Windows 11, no testing was performed on that platform. This makes it risky to generalize that simply deleting the file resolves the issue. Removing the driver without checking which applications rely on it could affect other utilities, and the file could reappear.
Compatibility Concerns Surrounding Legacy Kernel Drivers
In May 2026, Microsoft announced its "Driver Quality Initiative," aimed at improving the reliability and certification of kernel-mode drivers and reassessing how outdated or low-quality drivers are handled. Because drivers running in the Windows kernel can cause compatibility issues that extend beyond the specific game or utility involved, understanding the origin and OS compatibility of any legacy third-party drivers present on a PC has become increasingly important.
That said, Microsoft has not stated that this initiative caused the current crashes, nor that KB5121003 introduced any specific kernel handle validation change. Microsoft's documentation on Bug Check 0x93 explains the stop code that occurs when an invalid or protected handle is passed to NtClose, but this does not mean 0x93 has been identified as a common signature across the items in this Release Health entry. It's important not to conflate what's observed in individual crash dumps with the broader picture under official investigation.
Available Actions Differ by Title
For ARC Raiders players, the starting point is the Embark workaround linked from the game's official update notes. That procedure is a temporary measure specific to that title and should not be applied to symptoms in other games. As of this investigation, no official title-specific workaround at the same level has been confirmed for MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls or The Finals.
Microsoft is asking affected users to submit reports through the Feedback Hub. It can be launched with Win+F, allows attaching screenshots, and lets signed-in users search for and upvote similar existing feedback. Including reproduction steps, the affected game, and OS version helps narrow the scope of the investigation.
Uninstalling the cumulative security update would also mean losing its security fixes. Microsoft has not officially guided users to uninstall KB5121003 as a standard response. What happens next depends on whether Microsoft identifies the cause and a mitigation, or whether individual games release their own fixes.