‘Ghost Of Tsushima’ Is Already Flooded With Negative Reviews On Steam (Updated)

Updated 05/17/24 and 05/19/24 — See updates below.

Not long ago I wrote about how Sony was wasting gamer goodwill with the Helldiverse 2 debacle. The game’s publisher announced that it would require Helldiverse 2 PC gamers to link their PSN accounts to Steam in order 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 simply couldn’t because they lived in one of 177 different countries where it simply isn’t possible . Sony eventually reversed its decision after bad press and hundreds of thousands of negative reviews from Steam users forced its hand.

But the damage is done and the goodwill has already been lost. One of the best PlayStation 4 games ever made, Ghost of Tsushima, is coming to Steam today and the negative user reviews are already there. From what I’ve read so far, none of the negative reviews have anything to do with the game’s gameplay or performance on Steam.

Instead, the negative reviews all focus on the PSN requirement. In the case of Ghost of Tsushima, it was much better advertised. Helldiverse 2 waived this requirement for several months before Sony made the announcement, which is a large part of why it was met with such a huge backlash. The Ghost of Tsushima makes this clear from the outset. It also makes it clear that the requirement is only for the multiplayer co-op portion of the game and the PlayStation overlay, meaning you can play the entire single-player campaign (the vast majority of the game) without a PSN account linked to your account Steam.

My intuition here is that if there had never been Helldiverse 2 The PSN controversy, and all the bad press that resulted, The Ghost of Tsushima The PSN requirement would have gone essentially unnoticed. Sony has made this bed for itself and now every one of its Steam releases with multiplayer components will be hit with a lot of negative reviews that focus solely on that.

It’s unfortunate timing. The game releases on Steam at exactly the same time as Ubisoft unveils the first Japanese game. Assassin’s Creed game, Shadows of Assassin’s Creed. This game is already embroiled in controversy surrounding one of its main protagonists, Yasuke, and Sony could have easily capitalized on this by making a big deal out of the game. The Ghost of Tsushima Steam launch. Instead, both games get bogged down in their own controversies. And that’s why we can’t have nice things.

Note: I don’t see any official reviews of the game on gaming websites or YouTube, which makes me wonder if review codes were even sent out. This is somewhat worrying. I’ll have to try it and see what it’s like.

Update 05/17

The Ghost of Tsushima Reviews on Steam have definitely improved since I first posted them right after the game launched. At that time, a much higher percentage of reviews were negative. Since then, the game has received overwhelmingly positive reviews that brought the game’s score to “Very Positive”, which is, uh, very positive!

The game is fantastic, but I think it’s worth pointing out that by far the most common negative user reviews on Steam focus on PSN requirements rather than anything to do with gameplay or features. PC performance. There are also negative reviews about performance, including crashes, freezes, the game just not working, etc. Other reviews mention how it’s blocked in countries without PSN.

Regardless, my point still stands: even really good games that appeal to the majority of PC gamers are going to get slammed when you need something like PSN to play them. Nobody likes how you have to run Ubisoft’s launcher when you buy the game on Steam either. Activision was smart when it released Call of Duty on Steam and didn’t require people to also have Battle.net to run the game (although I like that game’s launcher less).

But in the end, I’m glad that The Ghost of Tsushima is receiving love from the PC gaming community. It truly is a wonderful game and deserves praise from as many players as possible.

In other news, Shadows of Assassin’s Creed is the first game in this franchise to explore feudal Japan. It looks really good, although I’m still a little wary of Ubisoft games these days.

Updated 05/19/24

This latest update is intended to help players who may be experiencing issues related to game performance (i.e. freezing, crashes, bad framerates, etc.)

The best solution I’ve seen so far comes from Steam user TheViltsuZ. This requires turning off PlayStation Overlay, which can only be done if you’re not playing the cooperative multiplayer portion of the game.

TheViltsuZ writes:

If you don’t care about the multiplayer side 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 improvement.

I’m on 1660 Super and before deleting the folder the game was running at around 40fps on high settings. After removing it, the game now runs at around 65fps. This is before you even turn on FSR3.

We need to raise awareness about this. The port is not good. Or at least the Playstation overlay is not a good thing.

Two things:

• I would say that this last statement is irrelevant. The port, made by the experts at Nixxes, is quite good and works very well for most players. There are many reports of crashes and other issues, but this is basically the norm for PC versions. Many factors play a role in PC gaming performance, from hardware age to third-party software and more. It’s inevitable and one of the biggest headaches for PC developers. On closed platforms like Xbox and PlayStation, this is not a problem. I think it’s safe to say that overall it’s a great port, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have issues with it.
• This is a fairly simple solution for anyone experiencing problems. Simply type %programdata%\Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc\ into your Windows File Explorer and locate the PSPC_SDK folder, which you can rename or delete. This will disable the PlayStation overlay and should give you a nice framerate boost. You can also reduce shadows, which could easily net you an extra 10 frames per second without affecting the visuals too drastically.

As I mentioned in my first update, the game’s review score is much better than it was right after launch. It’s also a resounding success, with over 72,000 concurrent players on Steam on the 18th, almost The God of War record as the most played PlayStation PC port. Not too bad!