The much-anticipated PC release of Spider-Man 2, developed by Nixxes, has encountered a rocky start, reflected in its 'mixed' user review rating on Steam. Despite initial optimism about the game's performance based on its system requirements, many players are reporting significant technical issues. Currently, only 55% of the reviews on Steam are positive, highlighting widespread dissatisfaction among the gaming community.
Players equipped with high-end hardware, such as those with an RTX 4090 and the latest Nvidia drivers (5.66.36), are experiencing frequent crashes. One user lamented, "Despite having a high-end GPU and running the latest Nvidia drivers, the game frequently crashes." Another player found the game "completely unplayable on PC," citing crashes every five minutes and has already requested a refund.
The severity of the issues has led some reviewers to advise caution. "Hold off on buying until they get a couple of stabilization patches out because holy hell," one reviewer warned. They described the game's state as "rough," pointing out problems like lighting not loading in cutscenes, scenes running at seconds-per-frame, audio desynchronization, freezing, stuttering, and a host of other performance issues. Frustrated, this player decided to seek a refund, stating, "I'm gonna get a refund for now because frankly, there's other stuff I could use $70 for right now."
The core problem seems to be related to the game's graphics controller, which crashes frequently, even on higher-end PCs. A common error message reported by users reads, "A problem has occurred with your display driver. This can be caused by out of date drivers, using game settings higher than your GPU can handle, an overheating GPU, or an error with the game. Please try updating your graphics drivers, or lowering your in-game settings."
In addition to crashes, other users have reported issues with features like DLSS and ray tracing not functioning correctly. Complaints also include long loading times, missing textures, and audio problems. Some players have noted that performance can stutter after several hours of gameplay, eventually leading to a hard crash, with suspicions pointing towards a possible memory leak.
Nixxes has acknowledged the issues on the Steam forums, responding to one user with, "Sorry to hear you are experiencing issues. Please refer to the troubleshooting guides on the Nixxes Support website and contact us if the problem persists. Make sure to include your logs and crash dumps as outlined on the support website, so we can troubleshoot as quickly as possible."
Furthermore, Nixxes has identified a specific bug that can occur during the photo-op missions in Spider-Man 2 if the framerate drops below 20 FPS. They suggest lowering graphics settings or resolution as a temporary workaround to bypass this issue.