Nobody is playing fighting games anymore, and Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls isn’t helping

My X feed is basically everyone and their mom talking about how unplayable Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is after ongoing PC performance issues. And it sucks, because I was looking forward to this one.

While it may just seem like the FGC complaining again, this is an ongoing issue with fighting games that has reached a breaking point.

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is being called a huge “fumble” after it launched with a ton of bugs, latency issues, and other massive issues that made it unplayable on PC.

The beta was seen as a huge success number-wise. It was the biggest turnout for a fighting game beta. Unfortunately, most of those players were immediately turned off by the game’s terrible performance. Now, just a few weeks later, the problems are still there. Maybe even worse.

There are a few speculations as to why Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is unplayable on PC, like that devs probably focused on PlayStation instead, since this is what most competitors play on. But that doesn’t really excuse a game running this poorly for most enthusiasts. Another issue appears to be the required PSN login, which is strange to demand for those on PC.

Said one frustrated player: “All your unnecessary PlayStation services running in the background on PC keeps my CPU temperatures always high like with no other game. For such a simple game that should easily run well for anyone able to run other modern fighting games, this is highly unacceptable.”

It didn’t help that the response from Arc System Works was pretty casual:

“Tōkon Warriors,

Thank you for an amazing launch day! Seeing you all jump into the fight has been unreal.

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.

See you in the game!”

This does not sound like a tweet about a completely broken game.

This has led to the usual reaction from salty gamers: review bombing on Steam and canceling orders. It’s currently at about 25,000 players on Steam, which isn’t as “dead” as people are saying, but is well below what it could have been if it ran as intended.

One reaction to this whole chaotic thing stood out to me. FGC commentator Evan Hashimoto wondered why fighting games are consistently the “worst made games of all time.”

It often does feel like fighting games are rushed out. I wonder if devs think fighitng games are the easiest way to cash in on an IP and just crank out slop to keep up with the other releases. There are definitely too many titles attempting to be an esport right now. But I’m just speculating.

It could truly be that fighting games are seen as a bit of a throwaway genre. They have a lot fewer players than other games, even the most popular ones. Someone on X pointed out this exact thing: how much money are devs really getting back on games they have to keep supporting and updating?

The FGC is notoriously broke and cheap, which is part of why 2XKO is on its way out. Riot overestimated how many skins fans would buy and laid off staff once they realized the game was not going to be as popular as their other releases – and the players were even less likely to buy anything.

Fighting games were their most popular in the 1990s due to the accessibility of the arcade. It was cheap. It was everywhere. You didn’t even need your own console. Being broke and cheap didn’t matter at all. Fighting games thrived in this environment, focused on a passionate, scrappy community.

By the early 2000s, PCs and consoles were in most homes and gamers were grinding Counter-Strike, Grand Theft Auto, and World of Warcraft. According to a recent study on fighting games’ modern issues, fighting game revenue declined at this time.

This trend continued into the 2010’s, but development costs also went up. That didn’t make for a very good combination, and quality slipped.

The report stated: “What followed is an absolute graveyard of fighting games. Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown (2012), King of Fighters XIV (2016), Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite (2017), and Dead or Alive 6 (2019) were all dead on arrival. Street Fighter V (2016) required years of patches to get into a passable state.

“Selling an alleged esports product that doesn’t even work online was pure insanity. Mortal Kombat X (2015), Dragon Ball FighterZ (2018), and Mortal Kombat 11 (2019) succeeded by sticking with the console-era strategy of filling them with content beyond versus mode, featuring some of the best in the genre to date.

“Across the board, focusing on core game mechanics at the expense of the rest of the product was a losing bet.”

Adding all of these new gameplay gimmicks, like Fatal Fury: City of the Wolve’s REV Gauge, has not really made fighting games more popular. Neither has making the games easier. New players aren’t pouring in. Evo numbers are shrinking. Fighting games are still not a mainstream esport nor are the games a commercial success.

There could be some solutions, of course. There has to be. I’m not here to tell you everything is doomed and the FGC is dead. However, it seems that every release is a bit of a letdown for fighting game players. It’s not just Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls. And if this trend keeps continuing, it’s gonna be pretty tough to grow the community or see bigger Steam numbers.

For now, it seems that the FGC is meant to be a niche. This makes for a great community and incredible events. But it’s hard to get developers to spend a ton of time and money on a game that will only appeal to a section of an already small community. It’s a bit of a cycle at the moment.