Arc System Works has rolled out a new PC patch for Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, aiming to address the performance and stability issues that marred the game's launch on August 6. Despite the update, the tag team fighter is struggling on Steam, holding a 'Mostly Negative' rating based on over 2,500 user reviews, and its all-time concurrent player peak of 24,498 lags behind other major fighting games like Guilty Gear Strive (31,156), Street Fighter 6 (72,977), and Tekken 8 (49,977), according to SteamDB.
Patch details and community reaction
The patch, announced on the game's official X account on Monday, promises 'reduced CPU load to help improve overall responsiveness and reduce lag-related issues' and fixes a bug that 'could cause sudden performance drops during gameplay.' The update also includes backend improvements, with servers back online after the maintenance. However, it remains unclear if these changes will fully resolve the problems that have plagued the PC version since its beta phase.
Prominent fighting game YouTuber Maximilian Dood, who abandoned the PC version during a weekend stream due to persistent stuttering, voiced his frustration: 'It's making me like the game significantly less. The game is unfun when we have to deal with all this.' Some players have found temporary workarounds, such as enabling the 'set graphics automatically' option or manually capping the frame rate at 60fps via the Nvidia Control Panel.
Context and impact
The launch issues are part of a broader pattern of problematic PC ports for Sony-published games, including Helldivers 2 and The Last of Us Part 1. Sony has reportedly scaled back PC ports for single-player titles due to low sales, but it continues to support multiplayer games like Marvel Tōkon and the upcoming Marathon to boost player counts. The game's performance on PlayStation 5 is reportedly fine, but Sony's decision not to send review copies before launch, citing its live-service nature, has limited positive word-of-mouth across both platforms.
The patch may help improve the game's standing, but the early negative reception and modest player numbers suggest a challenging road ahead for the fighter.
