Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’s Steam Debut Faces Challenges with Mixed Reviews and Player Count Below Its Predecessor

Sony is making headlines again with another PC game release, but it seems this time it’s a bit of a bumpy ride for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.

Just this week, Sony made an announcement that brought a smile to many faces in the gaming community: it’s ditching the PSN requirement on some of its major single-player games. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was included in this change, announced just a day before its PC launch. Now that the game has landed, a lot of players are relieved about skipping the PSN sign-in. However, the reviews are a mixed bag, suggesting there’s more to the story. As of now, out of nearly 4,500 reviews on Steam, the game holds a mixed rating. Many of these reviews mention issues with poor optimization, specifically pointing to frequent crashes. But on a brighter note, over half of the reviewers had positive things to share, so it seems experiences may vary quite a bit.

Setting the reviews aside for a moment, the game’s initial player numbers are showing a modest start. According to SteamDB, it peaked at 27,775 players at one time yesterday. While writing this, the number is slightly lower, but there’s hope it could climb again in the evening when gaming tends to pick up. For comparison, the first game in the series, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, had an impressive peak of 66,436 concurrent players. That’s more than double the sequel’s peak, positioning it as the fourth most-played PlayStation game on Steam, following Helldivers 2, Ghost of Tsushima, and God of War.

So, what’s causing this lukewarm reception for Spider-Man 2? There could be several reasons. Some players might not even be aware yet that they no longer need a PSN login, a requirement that had become quite notorious with previous PlayStation launches. Additionally, these PlayStation ports have notoriously had rough starts, which likely doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence right off the bat. Nonetheless, it seems likely that a patch to smooth out the problems plaguing Spider-Man 2 is just around the corner.