Severe frame drops in Nihon Falcom games - Steam only

[Arachno67]

Hi Kaldaien,

first of all thanks a lot for regularly updating Special K, it's one of the most useful tools in gaming!

Do you know which changes in the Steam client (August to September 2024) cause those severe frame drops / frame pacing issues in Nihon Falcom Games (Trails of Cold Steell III, IV and Kuro no Kiseki I, II I can confirm)? Apparently (for whatever reason) mainly New Game Plus saves are affected. A link to one of the discussions:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/991270/discussions/0/4425436888443381432/

Using Special K solves my issues in all those games, for some other users the frame pacing / frame drops issues seem to persist. Do you (by any chance) know whether Valve is aware of these recently introduced problems?!

[Kaldaien]

In my experience, Valve's not aware of anything they break, lol.

If a game is not AAA and they break something in their client, good luck. Valve will neither fix the problem nor issue a refund so you can buy it from another store with a less invasive DRM client. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it has happened to me multiple times now and I have taken to simply not buying games on Steam if they are available from any other store.

Thankfully those games do not have any DRM, and do not require the Steam client to actually run.

It is possible Special K's logs might hint at the source of the problem though. Easier for me if you continue this discussion on our Discord server.

[Kaldaien]

Re-posting my insight, hopefully @PeterTh can read this and take appropriate action.

Logs referenced:

steam_api.log