Dealing with that Annoying Black Ops 6 DirectX Error
Alright, let’s talk about this Black Ops 6 situation. I was pretty eager to get it running, you know? Download finished, installed, everything looked good to go. Hit play, feeling ready.

And bam. First thing I see? A DirectX error. Couldn’t believe it. Some message popped up saying something about my system or DirectX not being compatible or needing an update. Super frustrating. Just wanted to jump into the game, not troubleshoot tech problems right off the bat.
My first reaction was just annoyance. This kind of thing happens way too often with new games, seems like. Made me think about other games where DirectX 12 was a bit of a mess. Heard lots of folks complaining online how DX12 can be unstable sometimes, even though it’s supposed to be the newer, better thing.
So, I started thinking, maybe the game is trying to use DX12 and my system isn’t happy about it, or maybe the game’s DX12 implementation is just shaky right now. I remembered reading somewhere, maybe for Cold War or another title, that sometimes forcing the game to use the older DirectX 11 can fix these kinds of crashes.
Trying the DirectX 11 Switch
Figured it was worth trying. Couldn’t hurt, right? So, I went back to the * launcher.
- Opened up the launcher where you start the game from.
- Found the Call of Duty game section, specifically for Black Ops 6.
- Looked for the ‘Options’ button, usually a little gear icon near the ‘Play’ button. Clicked on ‘Game Settings’.
- In there, I saw a checkbox for ‘Additional command line arguments’.
- I ticked that box.
- In the text field that appeared, I typed in -d3d11. Just like that.
- Hit ‘Done’ to save it.
After doing that, took a breath and clicked ‘Play’ on Black Ops 6 again. This time? Success! The game actually launched. No error message, went straight through the initial loading screens and into the main menu. Played for a bit, seemed stable enough.

So yeah, seems like forcing it onto DirectX 11 did the job for me. It’s a bit weird that we still have to do these workarounds, but hey, if it gets the game running, I’ll take it. If you’re running into that same DirectX error when trying to launch Black Ops 6, maybe give this command line trick a shot in the launcher settings. Might save you some headache.