Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls launched on August 6, 2026, and while PS5 players are having a largely smooth experience, PC players are not getting the same story. Despite Arc System Works pledging a day-one patch specifically targeting the PC performance problems that surfaced during last month’s open beta, players are reporting that the game is still suffering from the exact same stutter and frame rate issues on launch day. And if you were planning to play on Steam Deck — forget it, at least for now.
The PC Problems Were Known Before Launch — And They’re Still Here
This isn’t a surprise launch-day fire that nobody saw coming. During the open beta in late July, PC players flooded social media with reports of severe performance issues — frame drops, stutter, and CPU spikes that hit even players running RTX 5090s and AMD Ryzen 9800X3D chips at minimum settings. The PS5 version ran noticeably smoother throughout the same period, which made the PC situation sting even harder for players who paid the same price for what felt like a noticeably worse product.
Arc System Works acknowledged the problems publicly and responded with a statement that became widely shared: “To our PC players, message received. The team is already hard at work on the performance you deserve, with improvements lined up for day one.” The developers also noted during the beta that CPU usage could temporarily exceed 100% in the first few minutes after launching — a stat that understandably alarmed anyone who saw it. They provided some community-suggested workarounds at the time but were clear those weren’t official endorsed fixes.
Now that launch day is here, the day-one patch has shipped — but players on Reddit are reporting that the fundamental issues haven’t gone away. As Redditor Davids Symphony put it bluntly: “It’s a problem that [Arc System has] to fix on their side, you can’t do anything about it. You could be running a 5090 with a 9800X3D at the lowest settings and it’ll still happen.” The stuttering and frame drops appear to be engine-level or optimization-level problems that the patch hasn’t fully resolved, not hardware bottlenecks that players can work around on their end.
Steam Deck Players Are Completely Locked Out
PC performance problems are one thing. Steam Deck players have an entirely different, arguably worse situation — Marvel Tokon simply won’t launch on Steam OS or Linux at all. Given that Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC), the anti-cheat solution the game uses, has well-documented and widely available Linux support — with Valve themselves describing EAC Linux enablement as essentially a simple toggle — the community reaction has been sharp.
The frustration got louder when a community manager on the game’s Discord apparently compared a request for Linux support to asking for a Nintendo Switch port. Redditor Rinnekaton captured it well: “The best part is the community manager on discord saying that, ‘Asking for Linux support is like asking for a Switch port.’ The game uses EAC, and I don’t even need to mention that EAC is widely supported on Linux. Linux support for EAC being a simple toggle (direct words from Valve themselves) is common knowledge at this point. In no way is it like porting to Switch.”
The comparison doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Porting to Switch is a genuine multi-platform development effort involving an entirely different architecture and OS. Enabling Linux support through EAC is a configuration choice that takes orders of magnitude less work. Whether Arc System Works will revisit this is unknown — there’s been no official statement about Steam Deck or Linux support at this time.
What the Day-One Patch Actually Fixed
To be fair to Arc System Works, the day-one patch does cover a real list of changes, even if the biggest performance complaints haven’t been fully resolved yet. Here’s the full breakdown of what shipped on launch day:
PC Performance Optimizations
- Removed unnecessary character animation updates from being performed, resulting in reduced CPU load
- Made improvements to alleviate the load on the user interface update
- Improved performance when running applications that use overlays or video capture — specifically OBS Studio via Game Capture and Discord overlays and video capture
- Added an anti-aliasing option to the automatic graphics quality setting to ensure the appropriate option is applied based on performance, preventing unintended load increases
- Fixed an issue that enabled unintended anti-aliasing plug-ins including DLSS, FSR, and XeSS
- Added a feature to custom graphics quality settings allowing you to change the update frequency of stage background characters — Medium and Low quality will reduce update frequency and slightly reduce CPU load
- Set the shader warm-up prompt at startup to ON by default, making it easier to find and run shader compilation before matches
- Fixed an issue that caused shader warm-up to run unintentionally at startup
- Steam version: Fixed a delay in sending input data during online matches, resulting in improved online match performance
- PS5 version: Implemented additional measures to mitigate input lag
General Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where the game would automatically switch between monitors on multi-monitor setups
- Fixed an issue where some players would become invisible after viewing Ranked Mode rankings and then entering the Online Lobby
- Fixed a screen distortion issue in Ranked Mode when a large number of digits were displayed
- Improved communication stability between the client and game server
- Fixed a crash caused by moving the mouse too quickly in game menus
- Fixed a significant performance reduction when large amounts of text were on screen, particularly when set to Arabic or Thai
- Fixed an issue where the game would become unplayable if the network connection was lost during the Challenger Alert screen
Gameplay Adjustments
- Input Optimization: Changed input prioritization to 236 < 623 < 236 after 41236, allowing more accurate activation of 623 when using the input 6236
- Danger: Revised input handling for ground dashes, making it possible to cancel into a skill from a ground dash and reducing accidental aerial special move triggers
Several of these are meaningful fixes — the OBS and Discord overlay improvements were a specific complaint from content creators during the beta, and the shader warm-up change addresses one of the most immediately annoying startup behaviors. The online input delay fix for Steam is also welcome. But the core stutter and frame drop problems that made the PC beta hard to recommend are still being reported as present, which is what most players were waiting to see resolved.
Marvel Tokon’s Year 1 Roadmap and DLC Plans
Amid the launch-day noise, it’s worth highlighting what Arc System Works has planned for Marvel Tokon going forward, because the content roadmap is genuinely exciting even if the PC port needs more work.
The game launched with a 20-character roster divided into five fixed teams of four, featuring fighters like Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Storm, Wolverine, Dr. Doom, Ghost Rider, Hulk, Black Panther, and more. The Year 1 Characters and Stage Pass adds four new fighters and one new stage, with all content expected by December 31, 2027.
The first confirmed DLC character is Phoenix Cyclops, announced at San Diego Comic-Con 2026 and slated to arrive in fall 2026. This version of Cyclops is pulled directly from the Avengers vs. X-Men storyline, where Cyclops was one of five X-Men to receive a portion of the Phoenix Force and became one of the most powerful beings on the planet. In gameplay terms, he combines his signature Optic Blasts with newly added Phoenix Force abilities. Ray Chase, who has voiced Cyclops in both X-Men ’97 and Marvel Rivals, is returning for the role.
The remaining three DLC characters haven’t been confirmed yet, but speculation is strong that other members of the Phoenix Five — Emma Frost, Namor, and Colossus — could be next in line, which would give the Year 1 pass a thematically unified team. If Arc System Works follows that thread, it could result in one of the stronger post-launch DLC lineups a fighting game has shipped in recent memory.
A Wolverine Battle Reborn skin inspired by Insomniac Games’ Marvel’s Wolverine is also confirmed as a free cosmetic available from September 1, 2026, and Arc System Works has indicated that additional outfits are in the pipeline beyond that.
Should PC Players Wait Before Buying?
That depends on your tolerance for performance issues and how much the stutter bothers you in practice. If your primary goal is competitive play and frame-perfect input response, the current PC state is a harder sell than the PS5 version. If you’re more casual about it and mostly want to see the Marvel roster in the Arc System Works art style, plenty of players are still having fun despite the roughness.
What’s encouraging is that Arc System Works has already shown it’s paying attention and acting on feedback — the beta communication was transparent, and the day-one patch, while incomplete in terms of solving the main issue, is a real list of changes rather than a token gesture. More patches will almost certainly follow. The question is how long that takes and whether the PC situation improves enough to match what PS5 players are already getting.
For Steam Deck players specifically, the only honest answer right now is to wait. There’s no timeline for Linux or Steam Deck support, and the community manager’s Switch comparison response doesn’t inspire confidence that it’s being prioritized.
If you want more gaming news from this week, check out our breakdown of the former Rockstar dev comments on a possible GTA 6 delay and how Target is removing Pokemon TCG plastic wrap to fight scalpers.
