How to Fix Black Screen in God of War Ragnarok

Source: God of War: Ragnarok, Developer: Santa Monica Studio, Jetpack Interactive

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The last part of Kratos’ Nordic adventures in God of War: Ragnarok is all but smooth sailing for the main protagonist… as well as for PC players, who were just recently blessed with this, previously, PlayStation exclusive title. The port, however, is far less than divine, as there are multiple issues regarding, for example, audio, performance, controllers, camera problems, or mandatory PSN requirement which can lead to further complications. Adding to this long list of problems, some fans have troubles with even starting the production in the first place due to SDK runtime errors, or after finally getting past them, the game presents nothing but a black screen. Here we will tackle the last issue and show an easy solution for it.

Fix for black screen in GoW Ragnarok

Contrary to the preceding story of Kratos, set in the northern lands, presented in God of War from 2018, Ragnarok has not been met with enthusiasm, at least on PC. Many of the negative reviews regard PSN account requirement. It seems that some of players’ concerns are not groundless, as there is an issue which can be directly related to this service (at least partially) – dreaded black screen. There are several things that can help alleviate the problem:

1. Go to saved games location. By default, it should be in C:\Users\[your_username]\Saved Game\God of War Ragnarok\6144 and locate a file named “userpreferences”. You can remove it, but to be safe we recommend renaming it, just in case. Now, launch the game once more. This time it should allow you to adjust brightness settings and sound. Proceed with the configuration and select “Limited” data option. This should solve the issue.
2. Alternatively, some players are pointing out that this is related to PSN not loading correctly in GoW Ragnarok. To solve it, you require another PC game using PSN (like Ghost of Tsushima or Marvel’s Spider-Man). Launch it and configure your PSN account there. It should be now linked to your Steam profile. After launching Ragnarok, there will still be a black screen, but this time wait a bit longer and it should take you further into the game, after automatically logging you to PSN.
3. Lastly, there are reports stating that launching the game as administrator works. Despite having small chances of success, it is still worth trying.

As we can see, despite the game not having Denuvo implemented, it still has its own issues. Let’s hope that Jetpack Interactive, which is responsible for creating this port, will soon release adequate patches fixing the productions problems.