Spider-Man 2 Debuts to 'Mixed' Steam Reviews Amid Serious PC Performance Problems

Spider-Man 2's PC port, despite initially promising performance, has received a mixed reception on Steam, with numerous players reporting significant technical issues. Currently, only 55% of Steam reviews are positive. Many users, even those with high-end GPUs like the RTX 4090, report frequent crashes. One user stated, "Despite having a high-end GPU and running the latest Nvidia drivers (5.66.36), the game frequently crashes." Another commented, "The game is completely unplayable on PC. The game crashes to desktop every five minutes. I have already requested a refund." Reviewers describe the experience as "rough," citing issues such as cutscene lighting failures, extremely low frame rates in cutscenes, significant audio desynchronization, freezing, stuttering, and various other performance problems. One user even stated their intention to request a refund due to the game's instability.

The primary problem seems to be frequent crashes of the game's graphics controller, even on powerful PCs. A common error message 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 This can be caused by out of date drivers, using game settings higher than your GPU can handle, an overheating GPU, or an error with the game.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.”

Beyond crashes, users report problems with DLSS and ray tracing functionality, alongside lengthy loading times, missing textures, and audio glitches. Some players claim performance stutters worsen after extended play sessions, eventually leading to hard crashes, with speculation of a potential memory leak as the culprit.

Nixxes, the porting studio, has acknowledged the issues on the Steam forums, directing users to their support website for troubleshooting guides and requesting logs and crash dumps to aid in faster resolution. They've also addressed a specific bug affecting photo-op missions, advising users to lower graphics settings or resolution if their frame rate drops below 20 FPS during these sequences.