When Square Enix announced that NieR: Automata would be released on the PC, a lot of PC gamers got excited. Normally, the PC version would be, by default, the game’s definitive version, however NieR: Automata was plagued by a lot of issues on the PC. Fast forward almost four months and here we are today without any patch to address its reported issues.
According to Steamspy’s datas, the game has sold almost 500K units, making it the most profitable of PlatinumGames’ latest PC games (both Vanquish and Bayonetta have sold less). However, and while both Vanquish and Bayonetta saw a number of patches, the post-launch support for NieR: Automata is nonexistent.
And while PC gamers can use Kaldaien’s amazing FAR mod, that particular mod brings some compatibility issues and bugs. As a result, PC gamers are forced to either deal with these compatibility issues or with the bugs found in the game’s vanilla version.
At this point, we should note that the PC version of Vanquish was handled by Little Stone Software. And while the PC version of Bayonetta was handled by PlatinumGames itself, Square Enix is listed as the sole developer of NieR: Automata PC.
From the looks of it, Square Enix has simply left the PC version of NieR: Automata to its fate, and we don’t expect any official patch to address the game’s issues (and they are plenty; from resolution and full-screen modes to control issues). And that’s just sad. Really, really sad.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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its a shame,i have to restart the game in some places to play.Its not even graphically stunning games.looks like a late 2012 game.I hope they patch the game so that i can finish it.Texture popping is killing all the fun here for me.
The game doesn’t like having Ambient Occlusion and AA on at the same time, so if you turn AA off and use downsampling instead you’ll reduce pop-in to standard videogame levels.
Just a small addendum (sorry), I believe you meant to say super sampling. But yeah, you’re right.
Considering how super sampling works, downsampling is far from wrong.
Quite right, same thing almost.
Besides what Articuno mentioned, you can also use a mod for it that helps a lot.
That’s an insult to late 2012 games. Sleeping Dogs and Hitman Abomination look far, far better than this (and both are Squeenix games, I might add).
As a lifelong Hitman fan, I have to say that is a much more appropriate title for Hitman Absolution.
In other news Doormat sales are up
Some Publishers have made it pretty clear that it’s a bad idea to buy their games on release or pre-order. If you want the games right away on release then you have to know that it’s a gamble whether or not you can enjoy it before it’s later patched and polished. For me, I wait until the game has been finished well after release before buying and as a consequence pay a lot less than full price also but that’s not common I guess. I want to buy this game and play it but if the Developer never patches it then they lose a sale.
I totally agree with you mate. I actually wait until several updates have been released so I play a finished and polished version of the game. It’s simply more enjoyable that way. There’s always something in the backlog waiting to be finished to kill the time.
Hear, hear. That’s precisely what I did with The Witcher III. I bought the game some time after release when the bugs had been patched out, the ‘free’ 16 pieces of DLC had all been released and the two expansion packs were available.
In addition to providing me a superior experience it also saved me plenty of money. The icing on the cake being that more great mods were available by having waited and many of the earlier mods had been further improved.
Buying that game on day one, much less pre-ordering it, would have given me a markedly inferior product at a higher price.
I hear you and I agree but for NieR: Automata, I just couldn’t resist and I don’t regret it.
Apart from FFXIV, an MMO where SE has to keep up with updates, SE hasn’t really paid that much attention to anything else for the past year on PC.
Then again they aren’t the only ones who release buggy AAA games anyway, so it’s worth noting like 64k has here, that buying AAA games at release is a bad idea. It’s worth waiting some months to maybe a year down the line to see if they will actually support the products they put out.
I just finished-finished this game yesterday.
I’ve actually not had any major problems, even from day one: the game ran at a locked 1440/60fps on a 1070 for me with mild momentary dips (probably into the 55fps territory — with most of these dips being relegated to one particular camera transition in one very specific corner in the game world) a handful of times.
No stuttering or weird slow down with the cutscenes, no funny business with fullscreen mode and resolution scaling (even when DSR’ing down from 1440). And I experienced one hang over the course of the 48 hours I put into it.
No mods or tweaks on my end. It just works.
But at the same time I am very wary because yes, whilst I seem to have lucked out and had a model experience NOW with a game this temperamental whose to say a change of OS, driver update, graphics card change or the most minor of Windows updates won’t cause the game to act up? I have zero confidence in the stability of my experience with the game should I choose to revisit it a few years down the line with better hardware.
I’m wholly disappointed in Square Enix’s meagre support for Nier: Automata, quite independent of my experience with the game itself (which has been exceptionally excellent). The game has sold very well on PC (nearing 500,000 copies) so the level of support is quite frankly abysmal. And what’s up with keeping Denuvo around after it’s been cracked?
A game that runs at 60 fps on the PS4, and you’re getting drops with a 1070? That sounds like an issue to me…
I grabbed it for the PS4 Pro after hearing about all the PC port jankiness, and I’m glad I did.
Generally, I prefer PC, but I’ll not support a bad port.
It runs at 60 on PS4, but not consistently. Heck the PS4 Pro version even runs worse than the base PS4 at points (see video below for reference).
And here’s the thing: the drops are likely the result of coding deficiencies in the engine rather than load (which would explain why they happen in one specific spot rather than based on load), so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they happen in the exact same spots on PS4 anyway.
My experience with the PC version was a handful of momentary drops over the course of 48 hours. Put that in perspective: we are talking about less than 10 seconds of non-60fps performance spread over almost 50 hours of playtime (and in a non-combat section at that). That’s basically margin of error level of performance drop off that could afflict even an incredibly well optimised game (not that Nier: Automata is).
The console version, in the meantime, experiences more slowdown than that in the opening hour of the game with harsher extended drops into the 40s.
My point is this: Nier: Automata is a very finnicky game on PC. It might run badly for you (as it does many others) or it might run nigh on perfectly (as it did for me). But if you luck out and it runs well (and you should be able to tell from the opening sequence) you’ll be in for a vastly more stable experience on PC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRlGlMMn830
These haters will never listen to you. They live to b*tch.
I had to use the FAR mod and lower global illumination to get stable 60fps at 1080p on my GTX970 and it still made my card run hotter than when playing The Witcher 3. The graphics don’t justify this.
Neir and the Witcher have completely different engines that use your gpu in different ways. You can’t compare games that way
You can actually.
AA doesn’t do any thing as far as me and 2 other friends can tell shadows dont do any thing to enhance the experience and to me the partical affects if you turn them down to low don’t seem to be different then high after you do that you should be getting 60 fps in most places i wish they would patch the game but it doesn’t seem like they care.
Sensible.
Not surprising really from Japanese developers. I never purchase their games anymore on Steam. They just don’t give a damn once they’ve got your money.
japanese console trash
Funny thing is Bayonetta and Vanquish received updates… Square Enix doesn’t care…
Nah, it depends on the publisher. A lot are bad, but most of Capcom’s stuff and SEGA’s recent ports (Valkyria Chronicles, Bayonetta and Vanquish) are quite good for the most part.
What they all have in common is an ear in to the western market, whereas Square Enix and Koei Tecmo don’t: slmost complete radio silence.
Square Enix is f*cking up with the Asian market, too. They screwed poochy with Nier in China, as well.
Blame SE.
Between this, the way they handled Hitman and Deus Ex and being the only as*holes quoted endorsing Denuvo on their site, Squeenix is really turning into cancer.
Everyone give negative review now, just like people did with GTAV and GTIV!
Lol i would have had to buy the game for that first. I don’t buy squenix games anymore.
i’m sure they are working on the game
they made it region free 6 days ago , my russian version of the game in steam now doesn’t need a VPN now
Whoa, sounds like some things are happening behind the scenes. Still, Square Enix have a track record of poor post-release support, even on console (how long did it take them to fix broken RNG on FFX HD on PS4?).
SE is the publisher not the developer
the code belongs to PG so blame them
Post-launch support is budgeted in by the publisher. That’s why Platinum actually deliver patches when Sega is publishing the game, but they don’t when Square Enix does.
What Articuno said. Besides, Platinum didn’t make the PC port.
stupid square squanders the PC market like we’re all thieves and such
disgusting
and considering the peasants shun the developer for 30FPS 900P
why are the PC market so ignored? we have the biggest community (steam) and a lot of peasants are switching to PC…
I wouldn’t ask the obvious question, you’ll have stupid dolts chomping at the bit to troll you into oblivion.
Why bother when you can get the community to fix your game? 🙂
somehow this is pirates fault, it is always pirates fault, even when the game is selling, is uncracked for quite some time, still sells after cracked, the communithy fixes it and the devs dont bother patching it.
because its a garbage jrpg thats isnt making any money.500k units between the ps4 and pc is bad.
jrpgs are a dying genre just look at ff15 one of the biggest jrpgs and it flopped.i think jrpgs have been dying for a long time.worse then mmorpgs.
its not a jrpg.
I think the proper terminolgy is Action-RPG or ARPG for short. Has a DMC-like combat, but it’s not the sole focus of the game.
TBH most open-world action adventure games hit the same notes these days. Nier falls into that same broad stew. There’s really nothing more RPG in it than the next action adventure game. Displaying values as numbers doesn’t really affect the game, and having rudimentary character customisation is not limited to RPGs.
If ‘J’ stands for ‘Janky’ then it’s a JRPG.
You are not even trying.
Wrong, the game sold 500k only on Steam.
Wrong, this is not a JRPG.
I’m sure you are butthurt because the game isn’t on your Xbox.
“Nier: Automata” is the seventh-best-selling PlayStation 4 video game (1.1 million copies sold).”
Oh, sorry, you were saying something about low sales?
Yeah, that’s right.
I remember that I started a thread on Steam to convince folks to thumb down the game to try and see if squeenix could repair it. But the weebs are a very headstrong bunch… they would not let the game’s rating go down. Some even stated that it may tarnish Yoko Taro’s “sama” (as the weebs call him) work
This is why I never buy games new anymore, much less pre-order. It’s come to the point that I’ll wait at least 6-8 months before I even CONSIDER buying “new” games anymore.
This type of behavior is what’s pushing me towards a Xbox One X, rather than a Rysen build…
At least on the Xbox One X the chances of this happening are lower, I rather play at 30FPS than unstable frame rate and constant crashes.
>This type of behavior is what’s pushing me towards a Xbox One X
*insert Charlton Heston laugh*
The game is capped at 60, so any drops below would be into the 50s or lower, which is appreciable even with G-Sync. G-Sync doesn’t quite work its full magic until you get to 70+ fps.
Have fun playing everything on a gamepad……
Yeah, you really don’t want a “Rysen build”.
Honestly i tried this game on three different PCs and had no issues what so ever. Sucks if people have issues but the games running awesome for me.
And people want Final Fantasy XV on PC… lol.
Assuming SE actually give a damn about porting it in the first place. Though there are enough weeb fans on Steam to take whatever quality of game SE throws at them.
Loads of weebs accepted the vastly inferior quality of Pirate Warriors 3 on Steam as well as the DW series.
I think it’s pretty much guaranteed to come. I mean, the game has an Nvidia Gameworks logo on the console boxes… despite the fact that both of them use AMD hardware. They’ve even used the game and its assets in Nvidia tech demonstrations a few times… which again, is really odd if they were never intending a PC release.
I think we’ll see a PC release announcement mysteriously coincide with the date the last drop of DLC milk has been squeezed out of the console cow.
I think the important thing is: will the PC version be the ultimate flavor experience?
I don’t. Never did.
Square enix is now officialy worst than EA…smh
They’ve been worse then ea for a long time now.
Not really. They sold IO interactive to the devs themselves AND give them the rights to hitman instead of disolving the company and keeping the IP’s locked up.
EA and most others woulld have disolved and kept the IP’s.
“NieR: Automata has not received any single patch”
This is incorrect. The PC version is up to date with the PS4 JPN and ROW version after the end of April patch was released. Yes, no PC specific issues have been solved, but the statement is that it haven’t received a single patch, which is false.
“And while PC gamers can use Kaldaien’s amazing FAR mod, that particular mod brings some compatibility issues and bugs.”
… What? No, it doesn’t. FAR’s “compatibility issues” are primarily with third-party tools and injectors (RTSS, Razer’s OSD software, FRAPS etc) and has nothing to do with the game itself. Further on, the only “bugs” FAR introduces is when using the FPS unlocker (disabled by default) along with scripted events of the game.
And square enix still wont get my money simple as that
What do you expect. It was Developed on PC by the same garbage team that brings over the Single players Final Fantasy games on PC. Plat games did not even touch this on PC. And it shows.
That’s why I refused to buy this crap!
“As a result, PC gamers are forced to either deal with these compatibility issues or with the bugs found in the game’s vanilla version.”
You missed mentioning the third option: Not buying Square Enix’s game in the first place.
It’s a pity cause the game is amazing!
Anyway for now on my GTX 1070 and didn’t find any serious problems
I guess they know PC version will be cracked eventually and stop redirect resources to issue a fix so they don’t lose more money, to be fair the game is not absolute broken, unable to play, just some annoyances.
Yeah, the game getting cracked is what’s going to lose them money, not the game being fundamentally f*cked up without the community fix…..
Nice priority system, mate.
They stopped releasing patches long before patches came out. Seems to me they got the sales they wanted.
Were talking about a game that when it came to PC came with Denuvo. That right there is a clear sign that they never cared about their paying customers. Why is this a shock to anyone that they still don’t care about them ?
I really want to play this… but I’m still waiting for it to get patched. I know the Mod exists that fixes some problems but I won’t buy it until those A’holes patch it themselves.
When will an Xbox version come out for f@cks sakes?! I’ve been waiting so long for an announcement for that! Why the hell hasn’t Microsoft done anything about it!? I wanted to play that game so badly! Come on, Spencer!
really no xbox version?
From the same company that said thanks DENUVO for making PC gamers to buy their games. Enjoy!!
look at all the cry babies to my post its a crappy jrpg that didnt sell.they didnt tell you how many of those 500k returned it with in 2 hours.
80% of jrpgs are crap its a dying genre falling below mmorpgs.
shut up idiot
500k idiots bought the game and waited for a patch or two and SE thinks 500k pirates forced to buy their junk because they couldn’t pirate it. Funny thing is, those idiots are defending it while being insulted by SE at the same time.
Example:
Guy below me (if you sorted it by the newest)
Why should they fix or patch anything? PC gamers sent them a clear message that this is acceptable behavior. OC gamers are worse than console gamers, i’ve lost all respect for this community. Just go look at that rating on steam and you’ll see why i say what i say. Mostly Positive – 76% of the 1,984 user reviews in the last 30 days are positive. What a message to send, HAHA.