[Known Issue][PS4/XB1] Stuck in "Cleaning Up" phase on load

So I also had this issue happen. I didn’t bother posting during the interaction bug as there was a lot of information readily available.

I’m on PS4 (single player. There are so many glitchy bugs in multi right now as well but I’m not here to get into that) and had decided to start from scratch.

I was pretty hyped about a super loaded cargo ship nearby on beginner island but knew I would have to fight a shark to get to it so spent the first day stripping the island of everything I could harvest and set up a rudimentary base. (A campfire, a tent, a water still) and made individual neat piles for resources.

This said, the entire time I never noticed a crab or any item that vanished or dropped off the map. Everything felt smooth and nice. Anywho, I stayed up all night in game clearing the resources available and as soon as the water cleared up from its early morning rusty state, I saved and prepped for taking on the shark.

The only thing even close to odd I found was that sharks seem to want to disengage for long periods of time at random. To the point where the “shark music” will play maybe two notes of its tune and then abruptly end… repeatedly. The shark then takes off to who knows where for a long time with or without spears in it. Oh! Also noticed a kind of… muddled audio glitch that forced me to reset my game close to the first save. Like multiple tracks and sound effects were layering on eachother. Hard to explain.

Anyways… after baiting the tiger shark out for a full daytime cycle, I finally buried enough spears in it to kill it. My aim was terrible and I lost 3-4 spears in the ocean. I took it to land, removed my spears from it and the sun set. I decided to wait a short bit in camp and take care of my needs (I ate a ration cause I didn’t do fishing like I had planned cause the Tiger Shark was being a bit odd) and then decided to sleep.

Shortly after I slept, I went to save. The game hung and stayed that way for a while… eventually the “game saved” came up and I was still stuck. I started mashing buttons and found that I had very limited control of my hands but zero control of my character (camera & movement) forcing me to force close the game.

Upon reload, I am now stuck in the “Cleaning up” phase of the load of the save. I have rebooted whilst clearing the cache and loaded it once more to see if the “Cleaning up” eventually progresses. I have been on this screen for over 30 minutes and unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case. Just to confirm, this was the second save attempt on the game file… and I had already preloaded a couple favourite islands in cartographer onto the map but had yet to visit them.

Thanks for the hard work you are putting in. I know this was not the most informative but maybe it will help even a bit.

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was playing normally. everything was fine for awhile. i tried saving on a island with the sleeping bag. iy crashed and now i cannot load my game. stuck on cleaning.

Experimenting on XBox One. Possible workaround, working for us so far: 1. When you sleep or save, wait for it to finish before moving, and do not move too quickly. 2. Do not sleep and immediately save or save and immediately sleep. Perform at least a couple of other tasks in between.

We notice reloading/cleanup is quick when we exit to main menu then come back in.

Will post an update here if this workaround does not continue to keep our game from crashing/freezing at Cleaning up.

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Happened to me to. Saved with a sleeping bag on a new island (flew there on gyrocopter) and the game froze. On restart the game is stuck on ‘cleaning up’ on the load screen

At firtst i will say that i play @PS 4 and have PS plus. I have uploaded my savegames to the online cloud by PS plus than i started my game and play. I played for a an ingame day and saved for first one everything is and i fo to sleep for the next day and play until the evening / night and and would save the game them its happend i freezed and must quit the game and tryed to load the savegame than i stucked at the loading screen. I ldownload my savegame from online cloud and overwrite the crashed one and start the game and played the same day again and saved quit the game uploaded the new savegame and Start again the game played another day saved =>quit =>uploaded online cloud => play another day=> saved=> quit etc.
This is how i get forwards day by day started at 14 and now 17. I saved only once at the day.

@Clare……so I played again last night for quite awhile. Was actually feeling comfortable with the saving again but I did try to make sure when I saved that I had nothing else crazy happening when I did. Ex…no firs lit, no storms, no bats flying by etc….I also put a bit of time between saving and sleeping at least 1 game hour. I had made it from day 15 to about day 45 with absolutely no issues and then I did a save that froze my screen. After knowing about the issues I did not hesitate and immediately dashboarded my game. I got lucky and when I came back I was able to load up the game and this time not get stuck in the cleaning up part of loading. I will continue to monitor the saving process I’m using although with what I’ve been reading and the two different times it’s got me I’m sure it’s just a matter of time again.

I’ve experienced an almost identical situation to yours. After killing a tiger shark(which felt like it disappeared until I ran out of breath and i get attacked from random angles almost like the shark was teleporting), dragged it to shore and went straight to my tent to save. Froze close to about a minute and then the “game saved” notification showed up. I waited while the screen and everything else is blurred/censored for maybe 5 minutes until I decided to restart the game. Now, been waiting close to 15 minutes on the “cleaning up” page. I will wait for a potential workaround or maybe a new patch.

I believe this bug with the cleaning on loading is just from the save bug because the game is half way saving and did not save all the data to ram so when you try and load the game it can not read anything so it just stays in a loop. But my guess would be missing bata that was handed over to Sony and Xbox or Sony and Xbox update was a little bugged, as I do believe the Devs did try out the game over when the fix was implemented and had no issues.

I had the crash when saving with the new update too. Tried to load and had stuck on clearing up also. The first thing I did was restore the cloud backup (automatically does this if you have PS+) and all is well again. Future saves crashed until I restarted the console and now all seems OK. So to sum up, restore from a backup (if you have it), restart the PS and crack on…

I’ve been playing games for over 35 years on most platforms going, but not seen bugs like this on a full retail game in a long time. I think this is a case of a too smaller team with ambitions above their capabilities. The game is quite satisfying when it works though…

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am also stuck in the cleanup process after my game hangs on save. Dear BeamTeam, it can’t be that after a game that has finally been resolved, a new appearance. How long should it go on like this?

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I saved the world to cloud deleted the game and then downloaded it and then uploaded the save back into the game but this does not work I do believe it’s stuck in the loop as it can not read the bata from ram as the save was not fully.

Just adding myself to the list of people who are stuck on the “cleaning” screen when starting up the game, and can no longer play (at least not that save slot, and there’s no point in loading up another save only to screw that one up too). I was saving at a tent on my home island after playing for several hours today with the new update, and having saved many times during that period. The last thing I saw on the screen was the “game saved” message and then it froze with that message on the screen, forcing me to manually shut down the game. PS4, all default settings except animals were set to passive.

This may be completely irrelevant, but when I start up the game and try to load the problematic save slot, my ps4 fan is completely quiet until it reaches this never ending “cleaning up” screen, and then the fan starts working overtime. Something intensive is happening there currently.

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Check my workaround posted about 3 hours ago - it’s for XBox - been working fine for us since we fixed it.

I’ve had this glitch occur twice once when saving at a sleeping bag on an old save and once on a new save when using a tent.
This may be relevant but one of the times I saved it looked like it was about to freeze but it managed to pass, every loose object on the island was launched sky high. Quite a spectacular display as I watched my hard fought loot go flying up and landing somewhere in the sea.

I’m guessing the saving freeze has something to do with the game interacting with all the loose objects as on another case of saving it froze with a shark corpse visible on screen that vanished when the game managed to tick over one frame. Nothing else happened after that I waited 30 minutes

Hey @rocitoc I would like to try that workaround but I don’t feel like starting a 3rd playthrough right now. My main save is the one that’s bugged and cannot be accessed whatsoever right now. Maybe if the fix for this current issue lasts as long as the last one, maybe i’ll just start another save. Thank you for the tip though!

Just an update and potential workaround. If you have Ps+, reverting to the last save from the online backup might be the only thing that can save your current game. You might lose a day or two in-game days doing that though. And following @rocitoc workaround works so far. I will try and recreate my original situation by killing a shark and saving after if that was the issue.

I am on day 115. When I load the game it gets stuck in the cleaning phase, and will not load. Do I need to download from an old save, or is this something that you guys can fix? If I have to start over I can’t see myself playing this game anymore. I love the game, but I have spent way too much time getting to where I am.

Hi @Clare i was able to replicate what happened with my situation. I was on a different island and I was able to save multiple times and do different things. Finally, I made my way back to my home island and killed a tiger shark. I was able to save before dragging the shark to shore and then after, I dragged the shark’s corpse to shore. I saved after that and that’s when the screen froze. It showed the “game saved” notification but basic functions were gone. I was able to open the menu and I went to the main menu. I tried to load the save again and I was stuck at the “cleaning up” phase. This is on PS4. I will try and download my online backup again and not kill any sharks. That is the only common factor between the 2 instances.

I have experienced the save freezing bug, and the loading bug, and they seem to be directly related to each other, in my save, and I haven’t interacted with any tiger sharks in any way, but other users have mentioned that they have dropped clay into the abyss and then the bug triggered, and I also noticed that I dropped a container panel into the ocean, which fell through the map, then the next time I saved, it froze, and was stuck on the cleaning up phase after loading.

I’ve tried salting my door frames irl, haven’t walked under any ladders recently, irl, and I haven’t seen any black cats recently either.

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