Firewatch dev working "around-the-clock" on PS4 frame rate issues

Firewatch players on PS4: relief is inbound.

Firewatch developer Campo Santo is working "actually, literally, around-the-clock" on reported PS4 frame rate issues.

"We're currently talking with both Sony and Unity (the creators of the engine the game is built in) to continue to optimize performance of the game on console," Campo Santo's Sean Vanaman said on Reddit.

"It wasn’t like we sat in a room, saw this stuff and went ‘eh, screw it, sell it anyway.’ We’re super f**king bummed."

"Unfortunately, it's a process that requires all three parties to be involved unlike a typical bug that we can quickly fix on our own (we're pretty good at that)."

Vanaman said will definitely issue a performance fix even though Campo Santo is pretty happy with how Firewatch plays.

"I've played the game for hundreds of hours on PS4 and don't believe the issues are severe. There are some hiccups but if I/we didn't feel like it was a good product we would not be selling it," he said, directing concerned potential players to a GameTrailers video showing the PS4 build in action so they can "make the call" for themselves.

"The small issues we have we were not able to get in-front of the right people until it was 100% obvious they were going to ship. We could've built a significantly DIFFERENT game (a game with levels that load all over the place) but we chose to build what we did, instead."

Vanaman advised players not to give too much weight on reviews based on pre-release code, but admitted Firewatch is the first big Unity console game so "everyone is learning a lo". He offered to refund affected PS4 players, too.

"We're really trying, I promise," he added. "I've played the game for hundreds and hundreds of hours on PS4, and maybe because it's on test-kits and some retail boxes are different I personally didn't experience these things.

"That doesn't mean they don't exist, but I want to unequivocally say it wasn't like we sat in a room, saw this stuff and went 'eh, screw it, sell it anyway.' We're super f**king bummed that this is happening for some people and we're working actually, literally, around-the-clock on it."

I didn't notice any significant frame rate issues in my own playthrough, but I'm not overly sensitive to such things. Sherif played on PC.

Vanaman also said a PS4 patch is on the way - a set of content fixes which is just waiting on SCEA certification to go live.