100,000 Players Can’t All Be Wrong—Or Can They?

Imagine launching your dream game to over 100,000 players on day one, hitting the top of Steam’s sales charts—then watching as angry reviews flood in faster than you can read them.

That’s exactly what happened to Wuchang: Fallen Feathers this week

Breaking Records While Breaking Hearts

The good news? Wuchang crushed expectations with 114,132 concurrent players at launch, climbing even higher to over 131,000. That makes it the eighth biggest game on Steam and one of the most successful non-FromSoftware soulslike launches ever.

To put this in perspective: Lies of P peaked at just over 30,000 players. Lords of the Fallen hit 43,075. The First Berserker: Khazan barely reached 33,000. Wuchang demolished all of them.

The bad news? Those same players are furious.

Steam reviews started at “Overwhelmingly Negative”—the platform’s lowest possible rating—before climbing slightly to “Mostly Negative.” Out of nearly 16,000 reviews, only 21% are positive. One player summed it up perfectly: “I want to play so bad but the performance is awful.”

When Your GPU Becomes the Real Boss Fight

Players aren’t complaining about the game itself. Most reviews say Wuchang is actually fun when it works. The problem is getting it to work.

Here’s what players are dealing with:

Performance nightmares. Even high-end RTX 4090 cards struggle to maintain smooth gameplay. Frame rates drop constantly, especially during boss fights—the worst possible time for stuttering.

Unreal Engine 5 problems. Many reviews call it “another UE5 stutter fest.” Screen tearing, black screens, and compilation issues plague the experience.

Hardware doesn’t matter. Players with top-tier gaming rigs report the same issues as those with mid-range setups. One reviewer explained their struggle: “I was unable to experience more of the combat due to the overshadowing performance issues. I tried just playing because sometimes gameplay can more than make up for lacking in other areas, but I couldn’t see much past the technical problems.”

Another player noted: “UE5 games are hit or miss when it comes to performance, and in this case it’s a miss unfortunately. This game needs a free demo for this exact reason.”

Not everyone is suffering though. A lucky few defend the game: “I’m one of the lucky ones: the game runs fine on my machine. No crashes, no stutters, no slideshow combat. Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is being unfairly crucified by players with garbage PCs and zero optimization knowledge.”

Sorry We Broke Your Game (But It’s Your PC’s Fault)

Leenzee Games and publisher 505 Games quickly issued an apology on Steam. They admitted “these problems should never have occurred” and promised fixes.

But their follow-up statement rubbed salt in the wound: “We are confident in the game’s performance within our recommended spec, but we’re working on optimization.”

Players aren’t buying it. The issues clearly run deeper than system specs.

The developers didn’t just talk—they also mentioned that some players didn’t receive pre-order bonuses and faced “pricing anomalies in some regions.” These extra problems made an already frustrating launch even worse.

Damage Control at Warp Speed

Within days of launch, the developers rushed out Patch 1.3 to address the chaos. The update included:

Performance fixes: Low Latency Mode became a manual toggle instead of being forced on by default. They adjusted supersampling limits for select GPUs and added VRAM optimization for lower-end graphics cards.

Crash fixes: Resolved startup crashes and execution stutters during finisher animations.

Gameplay tweaks: Made that brutal landmine section in chapter 2 less punishing by reducing bomb count and damage.

Goodwill gesture: All Steam owners received the soundtrack DLC for free as compensation.

Pre-order fix: Both standard and deluxe edition buyers now get their correct rewards.

Early reports suggest some improvements, but many players are still waiting for more substantial fixes.

The Unreal Engine 5 Curse Strikes Again

This isn’t just about one game. It’s becoming a pattern with Unreal Engine 5 titles. Players are getting tired of being beta testers for poorly optimized launches.

Critics actually like Wuchang—it scored 75 on review aggregators, with IGN giving it 8/10. The gameplay, when it works, offers fresh takes on the soulslike formula. Set in plague-stricken Ming Dynasty China, it brings unique style to a crowded genre. IGN praised its “excellent combat, wonderful level design, an incredible skill tree, and fearsome bosses.”

But none of that matters if people can’t actually play it. And the game’s availability on Game Pass day one means console players are having a much better experience than PC users.

What This Means for You

Should you buy Wuchang: Fallen Feathers right now? Probably not.

If you’re excited about the game, wait a few weeks. Let the developers release more patches. Let other players test whether the fixes actually work.

Your wallet will thank you, and you’ll get a much better first impression of what could be a great game.

The lesson here isn’t complicated: even the most anticipated games can stumble out of the gate. When 100,000+ players are telling you something is wrong, it’s probably worth listening.

And sometimes, the best launch strategy is knowing when to wait.