Developer Arc System Works is rolling out updates to fix the PC version of its Marvel tag team fighter, as it fails to make a splash in its opening weekend.
Sony-published games have a rough history when it comes to PC ports, between Helldivers 2 and the whole kerfuffle around PSN requirements, and low quality versions of single-player games like The Last Of Us Part 1.
The company is apparently backtracking on PC ports entirely for single-player games, due to low sales, but it’s still planning to release PC versions of multiplayer titles like Marathon and the recently launched Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, to boost player counts.
The Marvel tag team fighter faced issues on PC in the beta phase, and while you might think those would have been ironed out for the full launch, similar performance and lag issues were still present when the title dropped on Thursday, August 6.
The issues on PC sparked prominent fighting game YouTuber Maximilian Dood to abandon the PC version on stream, over the weekend, citing problems with stuttering. ‘It’s making me like the game significantly less,’ he remarked. ‘The game is unfun when we have to deal with all this.’
Some people have found ways to work around the issues, like selecting the ‘set graphics automatically’ option in the settings. Others, meanwhile, have resorted to more complex tinkering in the Nvidia Control Panel to set a manual 60fps frame rate cap.
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On Monday, however, Arc System Works announced an update for the PC version. ‘This update includes PC performance and stability improvements, including reduced lag and fixes for frame drops,’ a post on the game’s official X account reads.
This update has now been officially released, promising ‘reduced CPU load to help improve overall responsiveness and red lag-related issues’, and fixing a bug that ‘could cause sudden performance drops during gameplay’.
It remains to be seen if this patch will solve all the issues, but the PC version hasn’t exactly set the world alight on Steam. At the time of writing, it sits with a ‘Mostly Negative’ rating on Steam based on over 2,500 reviews.
In terms of player counts, it hasn’t taken off either. According to SteamDB, Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls has hit a concurrent all-time player peak of 24,498. This number is lower than the all-time peak for Guilty Gear Strive (31,156), Street Fighter 6 (72,977), and Tekken 8 (49,977).
Of course, it’s likely the game has fared much better on PlayStation 5, where it runs fine, but Sony didn’t send review copies of the game before launch, claiming it was because the game is a live service title.
That always seemed an odd thing to say and do, and it means that neither format has received much in the way of positive word of mouth in the last few days, which is not a promising start for the fighter.
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