Survivor Faces Bad Steam Reviews And Huge Patch

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is out today and facing tons of issues on PC. A torrent of negative Steam reviews complain about poor performance, while even fans who pre-loaded the game are waiting to install a giant 128 GB day-one update.

The long-awaited sequel to Jedi: Fallen Order has garnered plenty of praise in early reviews, including Kotaku’s own, especially for those playing on console. There are issues on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, like bugs and occasional wonkiness, but it doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as bad as what some are facing on PC.

Read More: Respawn’s Fallen Order sequel is a big, bombastic blockbuster but doesn’t forget what made the first one special

The game currently has over 2,200 user reviews and a “mostly negative” rating on Valve’s storefront, with only 35 percent of players reporting an overall positive time so far. The most prevalent issue appears to be wild framerate dips even on medium settings and with mid-to-high-end graphics cards. “Another AAA game marred by a horribly optimized release,” lamented one user review.

Some players say they’re struggling to hit 60 fps even at 1080p resolution, and even then the framerate seems far from stable. “I’d wait for a couple patches,” wrote one Steam user. “20 or so minutes of gameplay in, 2 crashes already.” Other players reported significant performance improvements after clearing Jedi: Survivor’s first planet.

This also appears to be with the game’s massive day-one patch already in place. Clocking in at 128 GB for a game that’s already 155 GB on PC, even those who pre-loaded the game had to essentially re-download it and install from scratch. Adding insult to injury is the way the files are getting installed. Players on Reddit report the Steam version is copying files, seemingly requiring over 250 GB of harddrive space to properly expand and complete the patch installation.

Publisher Electronic Arts has already promised ongoing patches to address bugs, performance, and add more accessibility features. Post-launch cleanup has become somewhat commonplace on consoles, but there’s been a string of high-profile messes on PC of late, including Callisto Protocol, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, and The Last Of Us Part 1. Jedi: Survivor is the latest, once again raising the question of whether a one-month delay was enough.

Update 4/28/2023 1:01 p.m. ET: Jedi: Survivor’s developers tweeted out a statement acknowledging and apologizing for the issues on PC, claiming most of them seem to revolve around players with specific configurations, including high-end graphics cards coupled with lower-performing CPUs, or running older versions of Windows.

“While there is no single, comprehensive solution for PC performance, the team has been working on fixes we believe will improve performance across a spectrum configurations,” the team wrote. “We are committed to fixing these issues as soon as possible, but each patch requires significant testing to ensure we don’t introduce new problems.”