Six weeks ago, Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls looked like the biggest thing to happen to fighting games all year. Its open beta peaked at 33,233 concurrent players on Steam on July 24, edging out Street Fighter 6’s own beta record of 32,787 from May 2023. By mid-September, the full release was averaging 762 players a day and bottoming out at 311 concurrent — a collapse that traces directly back to decisions Sony and developer Arc System Works made before launch.

From beta record to bestseller to freefall

Sony Interactive Entertainment and Arc System Works shipped Marvel Tōkon on PlayStation 5 and PC (Steam, Epic Games Store) on August 6, and the launch-day numbers looked strong: a peak of 24,498 concurrent Steam players, enough to land the four-versus-four tag fighter at the top of Steam’s bestseller list. That momentum didn’t hold. Steam tracking sites now put the game’s daily average below 800 players, a small fraction of even its launch-day figure, let alone the beta peak — a faster and steeper falloff than the typical post-launch dropoff most fighting games see once the initial rush of curious buyers moves on.

A PSN requirement that blocks 132 countries

The biggest recurring complaint isn’t the roster or the mechanics — it’s that Marvel Tōkon requires a linked PlayStation Network account to play on PC, even for players who never touch a PS5. Reporting from outlets including TheGamer, Vice, and Checkpoint Gaming found the requirement effectively locks the game out of at least 132 countries where PSN isn’t officially supported, including large markets across Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. Sony has framed the account link as necessary for cross-play between PC and PS5, but it also means anyone in a blocked region can buy the game on Steam and then find it unplayable.

It’s a near-repeat of the backlash Sony faced with Helldivers 2 in 2024, when the same kind of PSN requirement got that game pulled from sale in more than 150 countries before Sony reversed course under pressure. This time, more than a month after launch, Sony hasn’t walked back the requirement for Marvel Tōkon.

Mixed reviews on top of a rocky PC port

The PSN wall isn’t the only thing driving players away. Marvel Tōkon launched to “Mixed” user reviews on Steam, with player feedback clustering around three recurring issues: the mandatory PSN login, no support for Linux or Steam Deck, and frame rate and stuttering problems that players say undermine a game built around split-second competitive timing. Arc System Works has a strong track record on fighting-game netcode and presentation through franchises like Guilty Gear and Dragon Ball FighterZ, which makes the technical complaints notable — reviewers and players alike have pointed to performance, not the underlying fighting system, as the launch’s biggest weak point.

Why the drop-off matters beyond one game

A licensed fighting game built around one of the most valuable rosters in entertainment — Marvel’s characters — landing a beta record and a bestseller-list launch, then shedding the vast majority of its player base within weeks, is a data point worth watching for what it says about PSN account requirements specifically. Sony has now run this experiment twice in roughly two years, on two different genres, and gotten a similar result both times: a vocal backlash, blocked regions, and players abandoning the PC version faster than a comparable game without the requirement. Whether Sony treats Marvel Tōkon’s falloff as confirmation that the PSN mandate isn’t worth the player trust it costs, the way it eventually did with Helldivers 2, remains an open question — the company has not commented on the account-linking requirement since launch.

For a licensed fighting game, the stakes are also different from a live-service shooter: fighting games depend on a healthy, findable online population to stay alive competitively, and a game averaging in the hundreds of concurrent PC players struggles to sustain ranked queues or a tournament scene, whatever its beta numbers once suggested.

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Sony’s PC storefront strategy has had a bumpy few months — see our coverage of Helldivers 2 and Horizon Forbidden West briefly vanishing from Steam in the UK and our broader look at PlayStation’s live-service strategy collapse for more on the pattern this fits into.