Alan Wake 2 under fire for “ridiculous” minimum PC spec to get 1080p 60FPS

A new Reddit thread has claimed only 7.15% of PC players will be able to play Alan Wake 2 at 1080p 60FPS and fans aren’t too pleased.

Remedy’s latest horror title, Alan Wake 2, has come under fire after its PC requirements were released. The exceptionally high specs needed to run the game at 1080p, and 60FPS have caused concern online. Now, a Reddit thread estimates that only 7.15% of players would be able to run the game at this resolution and frame rate.

To reach 1080p, 60FPS, you’ll require either a 3070 or RX 6700 XT with DLSS or FSR 2 supersampling set to Performance. For ray tracing, it’ll need an RTX 4070.

Currently, Remedy requires players to have a minimum of an RTX 2060 for 1080p 30FPS at Low settings, with DLSS or FSR 2 set to Quality. This means that the image is actually being upscaled to 1080p from a lower resolution.

The current estimates of what resolution supersampling actually runs at isn’t precisely known, but it’s thought that 1080p with a Quality setting is roughly 720p upscaled. 1080p with a Performance selection is estimated to be 540p upscaled.

Most of the requirements for Alan Wake 2 list supersampling from AMD and Nvidia as part of the requirements, even without raytracing.

Remedy lambasted for huge spec requirements for AW2

Remedy Entertainment

The requirements have been met with backlash, as players with what they thought were high-end systems, no longer feel in the race. This isn’t helped by the fact that a large portion of users on PC still run GTX 10-series or equivalent cards, meaning the game is not officially supported.

One Reddit user said: “The last time I bought a game while taking graphics into consideration was the original Crysis, 16 years ago…”

Others chimed in with more logical comments. User Sheeplectric speculated that the “Series X and PS5 are presumably the lead platforms for [Alan Wake 2]”, which might have influenced the specs.

Both PS5 and Xbox Series X might have 16GB of onboard video memory, but the systems share this with the rest of its functions. It’s estimated that anywhere between 8GB to 12GB is often available once other features have taken their share.

The Series S has also been under scrutiny, as Remedy said they had trouble getting Alan Wake 2 to run on the system smoothly. One Reddit user joked that the game will run at an upscaled 144p.

Why doesn’t Alan Wake 2 support GTX and older graphics cards?

Alan Wake 2 is built using modern rendering techniques like Mesh Shaders. These provide better optimization for running the game but aren’t supported on GPUs older than the RTX 20-series or RX 6000 GPUs.

In two deleted posts on Twitter/X, Lea Nyu, a developer on the game, pointed out that the requirement chart didn’t include this information. She also mentioned that Remedy isn’t sure if the game will run without the mesh shaders. According to the deleted post, Remedy implemented an older style of rendering, but it caused a lot of bugs and scrapped it:

“I’m not sure it will run without it. In theory, the vertex shader path is implemented but had lots of [performance] issues and bugs, [so] we just dropped it.

“Meaning it might be possible to bring it back with a mod but don’t expect miracles.”

Estimates suspect only 7% of players will be able to play Alan Wake 2 at 1080p, 60FPS

Reddit user Surnunu

The Reddit thread estimates only 7.15% of players will be able to get a 1080p, 60FPS performance out of the game by using the Steam Hardware Survey as its data. As a vast majority of PC players will use Steam, it’s a good indicator of what hardware is currently in circulation.

4.57% use a GTX 1060, while 3.04% use a GTX 1050 Ti. Thankfully, it appears the RTX 3060 should run the game well, as a massive 6.1% use it. However, despite the GTX 1080 Ti technically being more powerful than the RTX 2060, it doesn’t support mesh rendering and isn’t supported.

Technology is advancing rapidly for games, and PC ports are taking the brunt of it. Recently, titles like Starfield and Lords of Fallen have come under similar fires as PC performance wasn’t up to scratch.

While optimizations can probably still be made, it’s very likely we’re heading into more turbulent waters for major AAA titles going forward on PC.