Ghost of Tsushima
Updated 05/17/24 and 05/19/24 – see updates below.
Not long ago I wrote about how Sony was wasting gamers’ goodwill Helldivers 2 Debacle. The game publisher announced that this would be required Helldivers 2 Players on PC can link their PSN accounts to Steam to continue playing the game. The only problem?
Many PC gamers either didn’t want to create a PSN account because they don’t own a PlayStation, or they simply couldn’t because they lived in one of 177 different countries where it simply isn’t possible. Sony ultimately retracted the decision after enough bad press – and hundreds of thousands of negative Steam user reviews – forced them to do so.
But the damage has been done and the goodwill has already been lost. One of the best PlayStation 4 games of all time, Ghost of Tsushima, is out on Steam today and the negative user reviews are already there. From what I’ve read so far, the negative reviews have nothing to do with the game’s gameplay or performance on Steam.
Instead, the negative reviews all focus on the PSN requirements. In the case of Ghost of Tsushima, This was advertised much better. Helldivers 2 waived the requirement for several months before Sony made the announcement, which is largely why it was met with so much backlash. Ghost of Tsushima makes it clear from the start. It also clarifies that the requirement only applies to the multiplayer co-op portion of the game and the PlayStation overlay, meaning you can play the entire single-player campaign – most of the game – without a PSN account Your Steam account is linked.
My guess here is that there never would have been one Helldivers 2 PSN controversy and all the bad press that resulted from it, Ghost Of Tsushima The PSN requirement would have flown largely under the radar. Sony made this bed for themselves and now any of their Steam releases that include multiplayer components are hit with many negative reviews focused solely on that.
It’s an unfortunate time. The game arrives on Steam at exactly the same time as Ubisoft revealed the first Japanese game Assassin’s Creed Game, Assassin’s Creed Shadows. This game is already embroiled in controversy surrounding one of its main protagonists, Yasuke, and Sony could have easily capitalized on it and made a big deal out of it Ghost of Tsushima Steam launch. Instead, both games are mired in their own controversies. And that’s why we can’t have nice things.
Side note: I don’t see any official reviews for the game on gaming websites or YouTube, which makes me wonder if review codes were sent out at all. This is a bit worrying. I’ll have to give it a try and see what’s what.
Update May 17th
Ghost Of Tsushima The ratings on Steam have improved significantly since I first posted this right after the game’s release. At that time, a much higher percentage of reviews were negative. Since then, the game has received overwhelmingly positive reviews, pushing the game’s score to “Very Positive,” which is, um, very positive!
The game is fantastic, but I still think it’s worth pointing out that by far the most common negative user review on Steam focuses on PSN requirements and not anything to do with gameplay or PC performance. There are also negative performance reviews, including crashes, freezing, the game just not running, and so on. Other reviews mention that it is blocked in countries without PSN.
Regardless, my point remains: even very good games that most PC gamers enjoy will face criticism if you need something like PSN to play. Nobody likes the fact that you have to run Ubisoft’s launcher when you buy the game on Steam. Activision was smart when they released them call of Duty on Steam and it didn’t require people to also have Battle.net to run the game (although I like this game’s launcher less).
Ultimately, I’m happy about it Ghost of Tsushima is very popular in the PC gaming community. It is truly a wonderful game and deserves the praise and praise of as many players as possible.
In other news, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the first game in this series to explore feudal Japan. It looks really good, although I’m always a bit wary of Ubisoft games these days.
Update 5/19/24
Ghost of Tsushima
This latest update is intended to help players who may be experiencing performance-related issues with the game (e.g. freezing, crashes, poor framerates, etc.).
The best solution I’ve seen for this so far comes from Steam user TheViltsuZ. This requires turning off the PlayStation overlay, which is only possible if you don’t play the co-op multiplayer portion of the game.
TheViltsuZ writes:
If you don’t care about the multiplayer section or the Playstation overlay, you can delete or rename the PSPC_SDK folder in %programdata%\Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc\ to get a 30-70% performance increase.
I’m using 1660 Super and before deleting the folder the game was running at around 40fps on high settings. After deleting the game now runs at around 65 fps. This happens before FSR3 is even turned on.
We need to raise awareness about this. The port is not good. Or at least the Playstation overlay isn’t a good thing.
Two things:
- I would say that the last claim is false. The port – from the experts at Nixxes – is quite good and runs very well for most players. There are many reports of crashes and other issues, but that’s basically the norm with PC releases. There are so many factors that go into gaming performance on PC, from the age of the hardware to third-party software and more. This is unavoidable and one of the biggest problems for PC developers. This is not a problem on closed platforms such as Xbox and PlayStation. I think it’s safe to say that overall this is an excellent port, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have problems with it.
- This is a pretty simple solution for anyone having problems. Simply type %programdata%\Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc\ in your Windows File Explorer and locate the PSPC_SDK folder, which you can rename or delete. This will disable the PlayStation overlay and should increase the frame rate significantly. You can also reduce the shadows, which allows you to easily get another 10 frames per second without affecting the graphics too much.
As I mentioned in my first update, the game’s rating is much better than it was right after release. It’s also a huge success, with over 72,000 concurrent players on Steam as the 18th approaches God of wars Record as the most played PlayStation PC port. Not too shabby!