Age of Empires 3: Definitive Edition gets a Steam hotfix to patch up memory leak

What you need to know

• Age of Empires 3: Definitive Edition is the third and final Age remake, released October 15, 2020.
• Update 5025 is a Steam-only hotfix that aims to rectify a memory leak issue some users were experiencing.
• Cross-play between Steam and Microsoft Store version has been temporarily disabled.
• A further update is expected next week that will contain quite a few more bug fixes.

Age of Empires 3: Definitive Edition has been released for just more than two weeks, and it has now — at least on the Steam side — received its third update. Hotfix 5025 aims to clear up a memory leak some Steam users were seeing; Microsoft Store and Game Pass users don't seem to be affected by the issue. The leak could cause the game to crash, and there were some rare cases of users with installed mods seeing player profile corruption.

The hotfix also addresses a crash that some people were experiencing while playing through the story mode mission "The Siege of Osaka." Because the Steam version and the Microsoft Store version now have different builds, cross-play has been temporarily disabled. The versions are expected to be able to play together again following another update.

And a larger update is expected next week for all versions of the game. The dev team is focusing on furthering its crash eradication, smoothing out cinematics (some would cause the game to hang), and having player ELO ranking stats show in casual lobbies. As for the Microsoft Store version, work is being done to properly show mods in the built-in browser, as well work on player names showing up correctly during matches.

The Age team does note that following this Steam hotfix, custom mods might not work properly. If you're seeing any wonk, it's recommended you disable any installed mods until further notice.