The upcoming Special Edition of Devil May Cry 5 was unveiled at last night's PlayStation 5 event. But while PS5 players and owners of the Xbox Series X alike will be able to enjoy the new edition in all its glory—including the introduction of Legendary Dark Knight mode, which causes enemies to spawn in hordes; the addition of a Turbo mode with a 20% gameplay speed increase; and the promotion of Vergil to playable character status—PC players are almost entirely out of luck. While playable Vergil will be made available as a paid DLC character to players on any platform who don't own the Special Edition, it seems that the new gameplay modes will be console exclusives, alongside other improvements including shorter loading times, ray-tracing, 3D audio, and a new High Framerate mode which allows the game to run at 120 FPS.
In a statement released to Eurogamer, a Capcom spokesperson explained the reasoning behind the decision. "Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition is specifically being developed and optimised to benefit the system architecture and leap in processing power offered by PS5 and Xbox Series X, so we're focusing on these platforms," they said, adding for full clarity: "At present, there are no plans to release DMC5SE on PC."
PC-owning fans of Devil May Cry 5 are feeling understandably put out, especially since the new and improved tech boasted by the next gen consoles largely allow for the sort of high-end performance that many gaming PCs are already capable of. "They clearly can't find a way to charge PC players extra for the next-gen upgrade that consoles are getting, so they don't find it worth the effort to give them the upgrade," lamented Reddit user RdJokr1993 upon learning the news. "Ray tracing exclusive to console, for a game that exists on PC. This is some next-gen trolling," quipped Eurogamer commenter Unreal849.
Unsurprisingly, some players have chosen to take out their dissatisfaction with the decision on Devil May Cry 5's Steam page, review-bombing the game with negative feedback while making it very clear that the decision not to release the Special Edition on PC was the cause of their annoyance. (Steam user Jray summarises the common feeling with their review: "Give us Turbo Mode and Legendary Dark Knight Mode you cowards.") At the time of writing, however, DMC5 still holds a 'Very Positive' rating on Steam—though whether this is indicative of the strength of the backlash, or the effectiveness of Steam's recent measures preventing "off-topic" reviews from affecting aggregated feedback, is unclear.
