‘Ghost Of Tsushima’ Is Already Flooded With Negative Reviews On Steam [Updated]

Updated 05/17/24 and 5/19/24 — See updates below.

Not long ago, I wrote about how Sony was squandering player goodwill with the Helldivers 2 debacle. The game publisher announced it would require Helldivers 2 players on PC to link their PSN accounts to Steam in order to keep playing the game. The only problem?

A lot of PC gamers either didn’t want to create a PSN account since they don’t own a PlayStation, or simply couldn’t because they lived in one of 177 different countries where that’s simply not possible. Sony ended up backtracking on the decision after enough bad press—and hundreds of thousands of negative Steam user reviews—forced their hand.

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

Instead, the negative reviews all focus on the PSN requirement. In the case of Ghost Of Tsushima, this was much better advertised. Helldivers 2 waived the requirement for several months before Sony made the announcement, which is largely why it was met with such enormous backlash. Ghost Of Tsushima makes it 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, which means you can play the entire single-player campaign—the vast bulk of the game—without a PSN account linked to your Steam account.

My hunch here is that had there never been a Helldivers 2 PSN controversy, and all the bad press that engendered, Ghost Of Tsushima’s PSN requirement would have flown mostly under the radar. Sony made this bed for themselves and now every one of their Steam releases that has multiplayer components will be hit with lots of negative reviews that focus solely on that.

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

Side-note: I don’t see any official reviews up for the game out on any gaming websites or YouTube, which makes me wonder if review codes were even sent out at all. That’s somewhat worrisome. I’ll have to take it for a spin and see what’s what.

Update 5/17

Ghost Of Tsushima’s reviews on Steam have improved markedly since I first posted this just after the game had launched. At that time, a much higher percentage of reviews were negative. Since then, the game has received overwhelmingly positive reviews that have brought the game’s score up to “Very Positive” which is, er, very positive!

The game is fantastic, but I think it’s still worth pointing out that far and away the most common negative user review on Steam is focused on the PSN requirement rather than anything to do with gameplay or PC performance. There are negative reviews about performance as well, including crashes, freezing, the game simply not running and so forth. Other reviews mention how it’s blocked in countries without PSN.

Regardless, my point still stands: Even very good games that please the majority of PC gamers are going to take flak when you require 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 they released Call Of Duty on Steam and didn’t require people to also have Battle.net to run the game (though I am less fond of that game’s launcher).

Ultimately, though, I’m glad that Ghost Of Tsushima is getting love from the PC gaming community. It really is a wonderful game and deserves the praise and as many players as possible.

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

Update 5/19/24

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

The best fix I’ve seen for this so far comes from Steam user TheViltsuZ. It requires turning off the PlayStation Overlay, which can only be done if you don’t play the co-op multiplayer portion of the game.

TheViltsuZ writes:

If you don’t care about the multiplayer side of things 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 boost.

I’m on 1660 Super and before deleting the folder the game ran at around 40fps on high settings. After deleting it the game now runs at around 65fps. This is before even turning FSR3 on.

We must raise awareness of this. The port is not good. Or at least the Playstation overlay is not a good thing.

Two things:

• I’d say that last claim is off-base. The port—by the experts at Nixxes—is quite good and for most players runs very well. There are many reports of crashes and other problems, but this is basically the norm for PC releases. So many factors play a role in game performance on PC, from the age of hardware to third-party software and more. This is unavoidable and one of the major headaches for developers on PC. On closed platforms like Xbox and PlayStation, this is not an issue. I think it’s safe to say that by and large this is an excellent port but that doesn’t mean you won’t have issues with it.
• This is a pretty simple fix for anyone who is having issues. Just type %programdata%\Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc\ into your Windows file explorer and find the PSPC_SDK folder, which you can rename or delete. This will disable the PlayStation Overlay and should give you a healthy framerate boost. You can also turn down shadows, which could easily net you another 10fps without impacting 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 smash success, with over 72,000 concurrent players on Steam on the 18th, nearing God Of War’s record as the most-played PlayStation PC port. Not too shabby!