I was only just saying this! How every publisher cramming their own launcher in front of PC games is a huge pain in the ass! And now we’ve got an example of a launcher not just being a pain in the ass, but directly—and in some cases significantly—affecting a game’s performance!
As RPS and others report, the 2K launcher that fires up every time you try to play Marvel’s Midnight Suns isn’t just a mild annoyance, it is also having an effect on gameplay. Users have traced issues with both stutters and overall framerate dips to the presence of the launcher.
Framerate dips are an overall problem, one that developers Firaxis have said they’ll be trying to address in an upcoming patch, but we know they’re also specifically related to the launcher because if you disable the launcher, then your framerates improve. Sometimes by a lot. Science!
I started playing the game this week and while I wasn’t experiencing any stutters, I was getting weird framerate dips in sections of a game that my hardware should have been more than OK with. And hey, whaddya know, as soon as I disabled the launcher my issues went away, and it was all smooth sailing.
RPS posted some helpful instructions on how to do this in their post. It’s nothing extreme; just some folder browsing and mild editing of the command line used to launch the game. Alternatively, you can watch this vid:
As for the game’s other issues, like some cloud save hiccups and its general unwillingness to run well on the Steam Deck (for which it is currently “not verified”), Firaxis says “the team is working hard” on a fix that will be addressed in an “upcoming patch.”