Overview
- Players have long reported severe performance problems on the Windows release, including low and uneven frame rates, stutters, crashes, and high CPU load that do not appear on the PlayStation 5 build.
- A pirated PC copy that bypasses the retail protections surfaced online and several community members and creators reported much smoother 60 FPS play with far lower CPU usage compared with the official build.
- Technical posts and user tests say the retail Windows build runs real‑time encryption that decrypts in small chunks on a single CPU core and boots multiple instances of Sony’s SDK plus Easy Anti‑Cheat, which together add measurable runtime overhead.
- Arc System Works issued an earlier patch that eased some symptoms but the cracked‑build reports suggest the root cause may be these protection layers rather than shader or user settings alone.
- The situation leaves paying players with a worse experience, raises questions about the tradeoffs of heavy DRM that failed to stop datamining or early cracking, and creates near‑term pressure on the publisher to remove or substantially optimize those systems while the community watches for an official response.