Xbox Game Pass’ latest free AAA game has received a bit of flak from fans, with many dragging the game for performance issues.
In case you missed the memo, The Outer Worlds 2 released this week on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5. Most importantly, if you’re an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriber then you’ll get it as part of your subscription.
For the most part, reception to The Outer Worlds 2 seems to be pretty positive. So far, it has a positive review score of 84% on Steam, and the Xbox version has a collected score of 83 on Metacritic.
However, despite the positive reviews, there does appear to be some contention over the game’s performance.
Some players have noticed that The Outer Worlds 2 is stuttering on certain platforms, as well as taking a long time to load up in certain areas.
“The moment you land on the first planet in Outer Worlds 2, the performance and stuttering start to appear,” writes one player on X (formerly Twitter). “Feels like any map larger than 500 square meters in Unreal Engine 5 will get you stutters that look like this. Absolute joke of an optimization and to think that they wanted to charge $80 for this.”
The moment you land on the first planet in Outer Worlds 2, the performance and stuttering start to appear.
Feels like any map larger than 500 square meters in Unreal Engine 5 will get you stutters that look like this
Absolute joke of an optimization and to think that they… pic.twitter.com/IVwXxHatPm
— NikTek (@NikTekOfficial) October 29, 2025
The footage they shared, which shows off some traversal around the game’s first planet Paradise Island, indeed shows a bit of stuttering.
The game seems to run at 60FPS, with slight hitches that occur every 5-10 seconds. At one point, it even freezes for a few seconds before catching up.
Why does The Outer Worlds 2 stutter?
As the original poster pointed out, The Outer Worlds 2 is built in Unreal Engine 5. While the engine has been celebrated for its graphical quality and ease of use, it’s also come under fire for its performance issues in large open levels.
Recent games that have used Unreal Engine 5 include Mafia: The Old Country, Silent Hill f, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, and STALKER 2. And each of those titles have also been criticised for performance issues, particularly in outdoor spaces.
“Ahh the classic unreal 5 stutter,” wrote another user on X. “I can’t wait to be sweating hard in Halo on legendary fighting the covenant and the stutter.”
“UE5 is a real issue,” write another. “It feels like devs don’t know how to properly optimize games with this engine, but Remnant 2 and Black Myth: Wukong are a few examples of UE5 games that run well. It’s possible publishers don’t give the devs enough time to optimize these games.”
