Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls launched on PC on 6 August with a 39% positive rating in English on Steam — and it’s been going downhill since. The 4v4 superhero tag fighter from Arc System Works has been plagued by stuttering, input lag and a raft of technical problems that left one of the fighting game community’s most prominent voices with no choice but to uninstall it live on stream.
What’s Actually Broken on PC
The PC version of Marvel Tōkon landed with a cluster of issues that go deeper than simple optimisation complaints. Players on Steam reported persistent stuttering even on high-end machines, online matches riddled with input lag, and a mandatory PlayStation Network account requirement that has effectively blocked the game in over 130 countries. Sony’s own SDK running in the background has raised concerns among PC players, and the absence of cross-progression means anyone abandoning the PC version to switch to PS5 has to start their progression over from scratch.
The game failed to surpass 25,000 concurrent players at launch on Steam — a figure that put it behind established fighting game rivals such as Guilty Gear Strive. That context makes the 39% English rating, currently sitting at “Mostly Negative”, particularly stark for a title Sony Interactive Entertainment had positioned as a major franchise launch.
Steam verdict: Marvel Tōkon holds 39% positive reviews in English as of launch weekend, with 41% across all languages — classing it as “Mostly Negative”.
Maximilian Dood Reaches His Limit
Maximilian Christiansen — known to the fighting game community as Maximilian Dood — has spent years as one of the genre’s most trusted voices. On 7 August, midway through a stream titled “Last day with PC version, sheesh,” he opened his Steam library and uninstalled the game.
“This is bad, chat. I don’t think I can play this anymore. It’s making me like the game significantly less. The game is un-fun when we have to deal with all this. You just have to watch it stutter like crazy.”
The comparison he reached for was telling: “It’s literally Dragon Ball PTSD all over again” — a callback to the notoriously rocky PC port of Dragon Ball FighterZ, also from Arc System Works. Maximilian confirmed he would move to PS5 going forward, noting the PC version was too unreliable to stream. He also flagged the absence of cross-progression as a genuine cost: every unlock earned on PC would be gone, with no way to carry it across. That did not change his conclusion.
Console Players Caught in the Crossfire
The problems aren’t confined to PC owners. Because Marvel Tōkon supports crossplay between platforms, PS5 players have found their online matches affected by the instability on the PC side — stutters and connection drops bleeding into what should be smooth console sessions. The community response has been for PS5 players to disable crossplay entirely, isolating themselves from PC matchmaking to preserve their own experience. That workaround has in turn fragmented the player base at exactly the moment a new fighting game needs a healthy, unified pool of opponents online.
Arc System Works Is Aware
Arc System Works acknowledged the issues shortly after launch, stating they were “actively investigating” reports from PC players. No patch or fix had landed by the end of launch weekend, and Maximilian himself noted he was holding out hope for a resolution — just not willing to keep streaming a broken version in the meantime.
Whether the studio can recover the PC version’s reputation before players move on entirely is the pressing question. Arc System Works has a strong track record with rollback netcode — Marvel Tōkon’s rollback implementation on PS5 appears solid, with Maximilian himself praising 100ms matches as playable — which makes the PC failure even more confusing to the community. The studio clearly knows how to do this right.
The fighting game community is loyal but unforgiving of technical neglect, and a Mostly Negative Steam rating in a genre defined by its online player pool is a difficult hole to climb out of. Until a meaningful patch lands, Marvel Tōkon on PC remains a game to avoid.
