Midnight Suns is an excellent strategy game featuring characters from Marvel Comics that players can easily sink hours into. Choices and team comp matter and the main character can be tailored to play to whatever strategy need be. There’s lots of variety, and the game runs smooth as butter…on console. Even with high end components, PC players are noting a performance hit with Midnight Suns. Even with lowered settings, there are noticeable frame drops, stuttering, and other performance issues.
Midnight Suns is not a graphically demanding game, even with ray tracing enabled, so it was a mystery as to why performance was so bad on PC. As it turns out, the 2K Launcher is to blame. If the game is purchased through Steam, Midnight Suns is forced to first launch the 2K Launcher before launching the game. Players have noted that by bypassing the launcher, the game performs much better. Read on to find out why this is the case, and how you can bypass the launcher as well if you own the game on PC.
Why is the 2K Launcher Causing Issues?
If you play on PC, you most likely know this issue. And each game company seems to have their own launcher now. Ubisoft, Bethesda, Origin, and now 2K, the list goes on. Most of the time it’s an annoying half minute to see the launcher boot up and allow you to play your game, but that’s the end of the issue. For 2K, the problems are just starting. For some reason, when launching Midnight Suns, the 2K launcher actively fights the game for resources like GPU and CPU.
It could be that the launcher is searching for game altering software. (The fact that this is a thing on a single player game is a whole other conversation) Or plenty of other reasons, but the fact of the matter is that by doing so, the launcher is actively hurting the game.
Related: How To Fix Marvel’s Midnight Suns Crashing on Launch
How to Solve the Issue
It’s pretty simple, and the best part is you don’t even have to do much. Simply follow the instructions, and PC performance will vastly improve in Midnight Suns
It all starts in the Steam launcher. Simply go to the Midnight Suns tab, right click and press on Properties. From there, click the Local Files tab and then hit Browse. File Explorer should open with the game’s files loaded. Follow this folder path to reach the alternate executable MidnightSuns-Win64-Shipping.exe
MidnightSuns>Binaries>Win64>MidnightSuns>Win64
Once you find the executable, right click it and press Copy as Path. You’ll need this path later on down the line. Back on the game’s Properties tab on Steam, click on the General tab. Where it says Launch Options, paste the code you copied into the text box. It should look something like this:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Marvel’s Midnight Suns\MidnightSuns\Binaries\Win64\MidnightSuns-Win64-Shipping.exe
The last few steps are simple, just add quotation marks to the beginning and end of the file path and add %command% with a space after the end of the file path. If done correctly, the text should look something like this at in Launch Options:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Marvel’s Midnight Suns\MidnightSuns\Binaries\Win64\MidnightSuns-Win64-Shipping.exe” %command%
Or
“E:\Steam Folder\steamapps\common\Marvel’s Midnight Suns\MidnightSuns\Binaries\Win64\MidnightSuns-Win64-Shipping.exe” %command%
Depending on how your computer is organized, it may look like either or file path. But finally, simply close the tab, and launch the game as normal. Midnight Suns will launch without the 2K launcher, and all the performance issues resolved.
Hopefully this fixes the performance issues in Midnight Suns. Visit our Gamer Journalist page on Facebook for more updates and discussion. And be sure to check out our guide on What Deck Building Restrictions Are There in Midnight Suns?
Published: Dec 23, 2022 08:52 am