New Phasmophobia Update Completely Breaks the Game

Phasmophobia was easily my most-played multiplayer game of 2025, my friends and I joining the fun shortly after it hit consoles in 2024. It’s no fun to repeat the sentiment, then, found on r/Phasmophobia that the recent character customization update has essentially made Phasmophobia unplayable.

For those unaware, Phasmophobia developer Kinetic Games has been working on some of the older content in the game. This includes the rework of 6 Tanglewood Drive, which is hard to swallow, but at least the map turned out okay. The most recent update introduced new player models, new character customization options, new animations, and a plethora of new bugs. The combination thereof has left many fans of Phasmophobia quite upset, with some outright uninstalling the game.

Phasmophobia Players Are Unhappy After the Character Customization Update

A quick look at r/Phasmophobia reinforces the sentiment around the latest update; simply put, there are so many issues with it that it’s barely worth playing. The top comment on a post criticizing the eyes of the new character models reads: “When your custom assets are worse than the store-bought ones,” per Conscious_Unit5839. Another post highlights how the necks of these models do not work correctly, others highlight how it’s impossible to see anything, like equipment in Phasmophobia, because everything has become so distanced from the character model, and plenty of posts criticize the animations overall. One of the top posts right now is a meme about uninstalling Phasmophobia because of this update.

Who’s That Character?

Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.

Who’s That Character?

Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.

Easy (7.5s)Medium (5.0s)Hard (2.5s)Permadeath (2.5s)

Beyond the core of the update being incredibly lackluster, it brought with it more issues than I’ve ever experienced in Phasmophobia. The house in 6 Tanglewood—where I’ve collectively spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours—now disappears despite that never happening before. The death room is gone, and the new animation is lackluster. It’s less stable than ever before, and while it might be functional to a degree, the simplest thing is that the game is completely broken. Check out these Phas images posted to the group chat during play:

That’s the door to the garage at 6 Tanglewood Drive, by the way. It’s one thing if the animations were just bad, it’s not like the original character models were “good,” but the original ones had charm at the very least. But the update has rendered the game effectively broken. Last night was the first night in the history of my Phasmophobia play where my friends and I ended the night uncertain if we’d play again.

Balance the critic averages

Easy (6)Medium (8)Hard (10)

Hopefully, developer Kinetic Games is able to address these issues quickly. It’s a case where one update can completely ruin a game enjoyed by millions of players, and if the studio announced it was rolling this back to put it back in the oven, there’d be a lot of happy players. It’s hard to imagine how quickly this has devolved. Phasmophobia introduced new ghosts not long ago, and that was well-received. The Tanglewood rework could have gone worse, and I even swallowed the pill of losing the original Tanglewood and still played. My friends and I were split over Tanglewood, but we’re all in agreement here: this update breaks the game, making it hard to play when it lets you play.