PC games need better optimization in 2024

Gaming has always been a passion of mine, and I’ve been a PC gamer specifically for over ten years at this point. In that time, I’ve seen some incredibly well-optimized games, and I’ve seen some absolute tragedies when it comes to performance. Titles like Doom 2016 and Forza Horizon 4 managed to run on basically anything, whereas games like Ark: Survival Evolved, Escape from Tarkov, and Cyberpunk: 2077 (at launch) are the complete opposite.

Nowadays, it feels like games launching in an unoptimized state is becoming the norm, with several large-scale titles launching in unplayable states. The Last of Us, Starfield, Hogwarts Legacy, and a ton of others are some of the biggest games launched in the last year and a half, yet they all ran poorly at launch. Games are launching in worse and worse states, and I really hope that in 2024, game companies focus more on optimization.

Poor optimization has been a growing problem

Games not being optimized has been a talking point for over a decade

There are countless games that have launched since the inception of gaming that have arrived in a bad way, and to an extent, we have an advantage over games way back then. Titles that launched for older consoles and handhelds like the Wii or the Nintendo DS couldn’t really get updates as such, instead, games would sometimes be updated and new copies in circulation would have a patched version of the software. These weren’t often done for optimization reasons though, but rather to fix game-breaking bugs and other problems.

As an example, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl are two games that launched with game-breaking bugs relating to saving and getting stuck inside of a wall. You could send your cartridge to Nintendo to have your save file fixed, but later production runs of the game fixed the problem. Nintendo obviously couldn’t release a downloadable update for the versions of the game people already had like you can with games today, which meant that optimization was something that companies needed to take seriously from the get-go. When a game breaking bug like that was found, it cost a lot of time, effort, and money to fix.

However, there are plenty of titles from that time period that sitll launched in a poor state, it was just less likely to happen because of how unfixable it could be. Grand Theft Auto IV is one title that ran poorly on everything, but it’s hard to find blockbuster titles that ran truly poorly on launch. In contrast, Cyberpunk: 2077, one of the most anticipated games of all times, was pulled from the Sony PlayStation store after a launch that saw the game barely function on last generation consoles.

Optimization needs to be a focus

Money is an incentive

Until people stop pre-ordering games, companies don’t really have an incentive to push back a launch in order to optimize the game further. Cyberpunk is a title that was pushed back a handful of times, but eventually launched and was fixed later on. The fact it was fixed is great, but it meant that gamers who trusted the company to give a good experience out fo the box were left feeling burned.

From that perspective, it always makes sense to wait before purchasing, but companies try to incentivize gamers with all kinds of perks and additional extras if they commit to pre-ordering the game early. This means that the developers get an initial cashflow right at the beginning, where in the long run it doesn’t hugely matter because the game can improve over time. It’s a practice that is essentially treating consumers just like beta testers.

In 2024, I’d love to see games launch with better optimization. It’s very much a pipedream, but it’s something that would benefit consumers, and in the case of titles like Doom 2016, it garners good favor with fans for years to come. People still talk about that game eight years later, but even if it was fixed, Cyberpunk is still considered one of the worst game launches of all time.