Marvel Tokon Sheds Half Its PC Players in Three Days

Saturday after launch is supposed to be the high-water mark for a new release. For Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, it's looking more like a low tide. According to SteamDB, the game peaked at nearly 25,000 concurrent players when it launched on August 6. By Saturday, that peak had dropped to roughly 14,000, with concurrent players dipping to around 7,000 at the time The Gamer reported on the decline.

That's close to a 50 percent drop in three days, and it hasn't come because players got bored. The Steam player rating currently sits at Mixed, with just 44 percent of over 2,500 reviews marked positive. The complaints are consistent and specific: a stuttering frame rate that makes a fighting game borderline unplayable, mandatory PSN account linking that blocks the game in over 100 countries, no Linux or Steam Deck support despite Easy Anti-Cheat already supporting Proton when developers enable it, and netcode problems that spike rollback during online matches.

What makes this so painful is that almost nobody is saying the actual game is bad. Positive and negative reviews alike praise what Arc System Works built underneath the technical mess. "First and foremost, Arcsys made an INCREDIBLE game," one of the most popular Steam reviews said. "The unfortunate fact of the matter is that even despite how good the game is, SONY insists on making it as bad of an experience as possible." Another reviewer said there is "no good technical excuse for shutting out Linux here," pointing out that Marvel Rivals already supports Proton. "Instead, Tokon treats Linux players as disposable before they even reach the character select screen."

The frame rate issue is especially damaging for a fighting game, where frame data dictates everything from combo timing to punish windows. "45fps for a fighting game is embarrassing," one user said. "If I can run Tekken and Street Fighter, I should be able to run this." FGC streamer MaximilianDood uninstalled the PC version live on stream, calling the stuttering "literally Dragon Ball PTSD all over again" before switching to PS5 exclusively. Professional players SonicFox and Dekillsage have also voiced frustration publicly. At least one US fighting game tournament has already announced it will run its Marvel Tokon bracket on PS5 hardware only.

PS5 players cutting the cord

The fallout isn't contained to PC. PS5 players have been encouraged to disable crossplay entirely, because PC performance problems can visibly affect online matches on console through rollback spikes. That's a live-service game actively splitting its own player base within a week of launch. For a title published by Sony Interactive Entertainment that was counting on a healthy cross-platform population, this is about as bad as it gets without the servers going down.

Arc System Works acknowledged the situation on the official Marvel Tokon social media account:

"We're aware that some PC players are experiencing performance issues. The team is actively investigating these reports. Please keep your feedback coming in, it helps."

No timeline, no specifics, no patch ETA. I covered this game's review score crater two days ago, and I wrote about how even high-end hardware couldn't save the PC version. The pattern here is clear: Sony keeps shipping PC ports that aren't ready, then asking for patience after it already has your $70. The mandatory PSN linking is the same issue that blew up around Helldivers 2 in 2024, and Sony eventually reversed course on that game after massive backlash. With Tokon, the requirement remains.

I think the underlying game is strong enough to recover if Arc System Works delivers meaningful patches quickly. The 4v4 tag fighter has the roster, the style, and the mechanical depth to hold an audience. But "quickly" is carrying a lot of weight in that sentence. Every day the PC version stays in this state, the player base erodes further, and the negative Steam rating calcifies into something that will follow the game for months. A fighting game lives and dies on its active population. Right now, Marvel Tokon is bleeding out on the platform that was supposed to double its reach.