Just Cause 3 released Dec. 1 to mostly positive reviews, but many of those reviews did come with a few caveats. Specifically, they mentioned the game's poor performance on all platforms.
From massive drops in framerate to hard crashes, the game isn't running like it should be.
That's evident if you take a look at the game's Steam store page. Just Cause 3's user review score currently sits at "mixed" on Valve's digital game store, a status no developer wants to see. That means the game has a near-equal amount of positive and negative reviews, with all the negative scores primarily coming as a result of the game's numerous performance issues. The first negative user review to appear on the list, from a customer who has played the game for five hours, simply states "gameplay 10/10, performance 0/10."
It's an issue developer Avalanche Studios is no doubt aware of and is looking to fix. In a statement yesterday on Steam, Avalanche says it is dedicated to making the game the best it can be, but that it is waiting for more data until it can begin to implement fixes.
"We know you're going to want specific information on when a patch will land and what will be fixed — we would love to give you that information, and we will as soon as we have it," Avalanche writes. "But right now, a little over one day since we launched, we have huge numbers of players in our enormous game world and we're monitoring all the data coming in.
"We need a little bit of time to recreate some of these issues and build fixes. Rest assured though — we are fully committed to making Just Cause 3 as awesome as possible. We already know loads of people are having a blast with the game but we'll do all we can to make sure everyone is laughing and smiling as they play."
Judging from the angry comments, Avalanche's commitment to improving the game hasn't converted many players, who already feel burned by the developer. PC players have gotten the short end of the stick recently, as some of the latest and greatest games (like Batman: Arkham Knight) have been poorly optimized, to say the least. In the case of Batman, the game performed so poorly that Warner Bros. took it off the Steam store for months until it could be fixed.
Just Cause 3 isn't quite that bad, but it's easy to see how PC gamers might get tired of having their $1,000-plus gaming machines be unable to play games that run normally on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. When the first patch comes for Just Cause 3, we'll be sure to let you know.
