May the Fail be with You: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor player goes to extreme lengths to boost PC performance, but it's still a disaster

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Cal and Merrin
(Image credit: Windows Central)

What you need to know

  • While the game itself has been highly praised, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is catching a lot of heat from players angry about the game's terrible performance.
  • Both the console and PC versions of the game have issues, though the PC port is significantly less stable.
  • One player uploaded a video to Twitter showing that despite turning down every setting in the game to Low, significantly reducing the resolution, and using Ultra Performance AMD FSR2, the game could barely maintain a mid-50s framerate during basic gameplay sequences.
  • Respawn Entertainment says patches that will fix bugs and improve performance are coming "in the weeks ahead."

Update 4/28/23 at 10:00 a.m. PT / 1:00 p.m. ET: Respawn Entertainment has released a statement about the PC version of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and the issues that players are experiencing with it, noting that the studio is "working to address these cases quickly."

"While there is no single, comprehensive solution for PC performance, the team has been working on fixes we believe will improve performance across a spectrum of configurations," the developers wrote. "We are committed to fixing these issues as soon as possible, but each patch requires significant testing to ensure we don't introduce new problems. Thanks for understanding and apologies to any of our players experiencing these issues."

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Our original story is below.


Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is finally here, but unfortunately, its performance and stability on PC has proven to be very rough. Multiple reviewers warned fans of issues like huge framerate drops, crashes, and stutters ahead of the game's launch, and now that it's in their hands, players are discovering just how severe the problems are. At the time of writing, only 35% of the 2,268 reviews on Steam are positive, resulting in Survivor getting a "Mostly Negative" on its launch day.

When you experience bad performance in a PC game, it's natural to think you can improve it by lowering the game's graphics settings. This tends to help in most cases, but in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, doing so appears to have little to absolutely no effect. In a Twitter video, YouTuber Mutahar shows that despite turning down every setting in the game to Low, disabling ray tracing, using the Ultra Performance preset of AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2, and even lowering the resolution to a measly 1024x768 pixels, Survivor still doesn't even come close to a smooth 60 FPS.

As you can see in the clip, the framerate barely manages to stay in the 50s with these ultra-low settings even though there's nothing going on in the scene. I imagine that things dipped even lower when any type of combat with Imperial forces started.

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If a YouTuber's beastly RTX 4090 and Ryzen 9 5950X rig can't even hit 60 FPS using the lowest settings possible, it's clear that there are some deeper issues here that can't be mitigated by user tweaks. Many players and Mutahar's performance analysis software both report low GPU and CPU utilization, so perhaps that's the root of the game's broken state. Hopefully developer Respawn Entertainment can resolve this and other Star Wars Jedi: Survivor issues, bugs, and glitches soon.

The trend of major games launching with unplayable PC ports is incredibly worrying, and it's gotten to the point where I don't even bother buying new PC games until several weeks or months after they release so I don't have to deal with a giant list of technical problems. Granted, the console editions of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor have several issues, too, but it's clear that they're still much more stable than the version PC gamers got.

The developers have said that patches "in the weeks ahead" will fix bugs and improve performance. Until those updates arrive and the community confirms they're effective, though, I'd avoid buying Survivor on PC. It may eventually become one of the best PC games for Star Wars lovers, but right now, you should pass.

Image

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

Respawn Entertainment has taken feedback from what didn't work in Fallen Order, and the result is an adventure game that Star Wars fans are sure to love. However, the performance is incredibly rough right now, especially on PC. You may want to hold off until the developers patch the game up.

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Brendan Lowry

Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he's been an avid fan since childhood. You'll find him doing reviews, editorials, and general coverage on everything Xbox and PC. Follow him on Twitter.

  • rchapman80
    Maybe I'm wrong and if I am, feel free to correct me. Doesn't it seem that any new game release for PC has way too many issues? I feel like it's always the big AAA titles. Almost better to stay away from them for a month or so until issues get resolved.
    Reply
  • BINARYGOD
    rchapman80 said:
    Maybe I'm wrong and if I am, feel free to correct me. Doesn't it seem that any new game release for PC has way too many issues? I feel like it's always the big AAA titles. Almost better to stay away from them for a month or so until issues get resolved.
    Yes, but you should note its worse now than its ever been, and its the consoles are not doing that much better in terms of patches and poor performance - its probably a better number (lower) than PC, but its beyond whats it been before, ignore second half of the 360/ps3 gen where almost nothing (literally) was actually 720p or 30fps.

    its that, but with way more pc port problems added in. Hopefully it really is just the pandemic hang over and things will get better, but I think the chickens are coming home to roost wrt to how games are developed - which is badly.
    Reply
  • Laura Knotek
    I simply ignore any of these expensive titles from big companies in favour of games from indie developers. That way I have more games to play for a cheaper price. I also don't have to bother with XBox, EA, etc and their DRM. GOG has many great games that don't cost an arm and a leg and don't run terribly.
    Reply