By Sagar V. Mankar 
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 finally swung onto PC on January 30, but its landing hasn’t been as graceful as fans hoped. The highly anticipated port, arriving about a year after its successful PlayStation 5 release, has encountered significant technical hurdles that are affecting players’ experiences.
The numbers tell the story. With 18,907 concurrent players at its peak on Steam, Spider-Man 2’s PC debut surpassed Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (13,539 players) but fell notably short of the original Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, which attracted 66,436 players at its height. To put this in perspective, even Days Gone, another PlayStation port, managed to draw 27,450 concurrent players during its PC launch.
The lower player count might be explained by the numerous technical issues plaguing the release. Players have reported a wide array of problems, including frequent crashes, unstable frame rates, and various visual glitches. Some users are experiencing missing textures, broken DLSS implementation, and even characters appearing in T-poses or missing body parts during cutscenes. These issues have led to a “Mixed” rating on Steam, with only 55% of reviews being positive – a stark contrast to the original Spider-Man’s “Overwhelmingly Positive” 96% rating.
Nixxes Software, the studio responsible for the PC port, has previously demonstrated expertise with other PlayStation-to-PC conversions. However, their usual polish seems to be missing this time around. The gaming community has noted the surprisingly quiet launch, with minimal marketing efforts from both Sony and Insomniac Games leading up to the release.
Adding to the challenges, the game’s availability has been limited by region restrictions. According to SteamDB, Spider-Man 2 remains unavailable in 136 countries and territories, despite Sony’s recent announcement about removing mandatory PlayStation Network requirements for some of its PC ports.
This release continues Sony’s strategy of bringing its exclusive titles to PC, following successful ports of games like God of War, Horizon, and Ghost of Tsushima. While the waiting period between console and PC releases has been shrinking – now down to about a year – this particular launch suggests that rushing a port might not always yield the best results.
This is reminiscent of The Last of Us Part I’s troubled PC launch in 2023, where poor optimization caused widespread frustration. Given the severity of these issues, many players are advising others to wait until patches are released before purchasing the game. If Sony and Nixxes can address these problems quickly, there is still potential for the game to gain traction.
Source: SteamDB