Steam reviews for Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls remain firmly ‘Mixed’ due to ongoing problems with the PC version of the game. Digital Rights Management (DRM) software used for Tōkon on PC is reportedly causing poor performance, and now players have managed to crack the game… despite the DRM. Benchmarks already show the cracked version running much more smoothly.

Users with all kinds of hardware have been complaining about the PC performance issues. When a Steam reviewer with two of the best gaming components on the market – the Ryzen 7 9850X3D and RTX 4090 – is complaining about performance, then you know something is wrong. On the flip side, someone with the cracked version has it running smoothly on a GTX 1650 laptop.

PC performance issues in Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls

Reportedly, the DRM used in Marvel Tōkon (Theia) is run on a single core, in turn, causing some nasty CPU bottleneck issues. This has led to stuttering issues, even if it’s only flipping between the game’s locked 60 FPS and 59 FPS. Fighting games are predominately capped at 60 FPS due to core gameplay logic such as frame data and inputs being measured in individual frames.

Anything that disrupts this direct link between FPS and frame data can be instantly noticeable. The game’s netcode is also affected, causing one-sided rollback issues, with the person enjoying a steady framerate coming worse off. It didn’t take long for PS5 players to turn off crossplay en masse due to repeated issues when matching up with PC players in multiplayer modes.

In addition to the DRM/anti-tamper issues with Theia, other overhead software includes Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) and Sony’s backend for PlayStation Network; a linked PSN account is a requirement for Marvel Tōkon. As you may expect, the cracked version has none of these requirements, and players report a much easier time performance-wise.

As seen below, user @Alperen5841 on X reports no problems on a GTX 1650 laptop – a GPU that launched 4 major generations ago in 2019. According to them, the laptop has 24GB of RAM and a 9th-gen Intel i5 processor. Players using the cracked version are unable to play online, but these reports are nonetheless a demostration of the disruptive DRM, PSN, and anti-cheat overhead.

The good news is that developer Arc System Works has acknowledged stability issues and has promised a new update “later this week” for both the PS5 and PC versions. There had previously been a major PC patch which solved some issues, but the whole problem hasn’t been solved just yet. It seems as long as the troublesome DRM is present, the game will continue to face performance issues – though we’d be happy to be proven wrong.

We think it’s fair to call Marvel Tōkon one of the biggest fighting game launches of the year, so these problems are frustrating. The game had its first major LAN tournament over the past weekend, attracting a total of 1,059 players at the CEO Fighting Game Championships. These tournaments stick to PS5 hardware, so no problems there, but PC gamers continue to feel hard done by.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.