Need for Speed Heat Update 1.03 is now live, clocking in at just 854MB this patch will bring a number of fixes to PC, PS4, and Xbox One, including reduced load times and improved stability along with a few other things.

On the PC side of things, the update is called 1.4, though included the patch notes of 1.03, which went live for consoles early this morning.  You can find the full patch notes down below, but the big changes are done to night races as their intros have been cut-down to improve load times.

Need for Speed Heat update 1.03 patch notes:

Environment – Night race intros

You’ve reported long loading screens before the start of races, and we have made an effort to reduce these. While we hope you’ll notice this improvement, you might also notice something else.
When you play after the update, the visual effects will be less spectacular during the intro and start of a night race. More specifically, there’ll be no fancy lights, smoke, fire or spectator’s cars. While this isn’t ideal, we wanted to improve the stability and reduce loading times in the short run, and we are aiming at bringing back these effects in a future update.

Fixes

No Bank or Rep rewards awarded for playing the first races in the game.

Some players would not earn any Bank or Rep rewards when they first played the game. Prior to the update, this could be resolved by restarting the game – which should no longer be necessary now, as it shouldn’t be happening anymore in the first place.

Inventory sync error

There were rare cases where upon choosing “Play Solo” or “Play Online”, players would be prompted with a message that their local and online inventories do not match, and asking if they wanted to sync them. In a few cases, when choosing yes, Bank and cars would disappear, while story progression and Rep level remained.

We’re sorry this happened – it should now no longer occur, and players should find the Pre-Order and Deluxe cars again in the dealership to purchase for 0 Bank.

Crashes & Freezes

You reported that using community wraps or wraps with a high amount of layers could cause some issues. We’ve taken a closer look, and this should no longer cause the game to crash.

Additionally, we fixed some other instances where the game could freeze or crash, which should increase the overall stability of the game client.

Other fixes:

• Fixed an issue where trial users could experience an extended black screen when they first launched the game.
• Fixed an issue where players were unable to invite crew members using the search function.
• Fixed an issue where using a specific controller on PC could crash the game.

And in case you missed it, make sure to read up on our Need for Speed: Heat review