Jedi: Survivor is worth playing in 2026, and it is almost never worth $69.99, which is still its Steam list price. It is on EA Play, which means it is included with Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, and it drops to $20 to $30 in most sales. The PC version, which launched in 2023 in a state that made it the year's cautionary tale, has been fixed: Patch 9 in September 2024 removed Denuvo and dealt with the stutter, and nothing has broken since. Here is the case, the price to pay, and who should play Fallen Order instead.
What it is, if you skipped 2023
Respawn's sequel to Fallen Order: Cal Kestis five years on, a bigger open hub on Koboh, five lightsaber stances instead of two, and a story that is the best thing EA's Star Wars deal produced until Zero Company. It scored 85 on Metacritic on console, which our Disney-era ranking put second of the eight games since 2015, behind only Zero Company's 86 and ahead of Fallen Order's 79. Reviews were unanimous that the game was excellent and that the PC version was not ready.
The PC version, then and now
At launch the PC port stuttered on hardware that should have laughed at it, ate CPU cores, and shipped with Denuvo on top. Respawn patched it nine times on PC over the next sixteen months. The one that matters is Patch 9, September 12, 2024: Denuvo removed, "framerate improvements for various hardware configurations," fixes for "several sources of framerate hitching," ray tracing rebalanced to stop hammering the CPU, and the shader "Optimizing Game Files" step made to use every core so it takes minutes rather than a coffee break. Patch 10, in January 2025, was PS5 Pro only.
That is where it has sat since. Our read after two years of that build: it runs the way it should have in 2023. Ray tracing still costs more than it gives, so turn it off, and a mid-range GPU with DLSS or FSR holds 60 at 1440p. Steam Deck is Valve-rated Playable with small-text and launcher warnings, and ProtonDB has it Gold on 253 reports; players say to go lower than Valve's defaults. The EA app is still required on Steam.
Who is still playing
We count the Steam version every two hours. Since August 24 it has peaked at 2,080 concurrent players on a Sunday evening and sits between 1,000 and 1,400 on a weeknight, roughly double Fallen Order's 700 to 1,150 over the same period. For a three-year-old single-player game with no online mode those are healthy numbers, and they are only the PC slice of an audience that is mostly on consoles.
The price to pay
| How | Cost | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Steam or EA app, list | $69.99 | No. It has been on sale for a third of this repeatedly |
| Sale price | $20 to $30 | Yes, without hesitation |
| EA Play (standalone) | monthly | Yes if you will finish it in a month; it is 25 to 35 hours |
| Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass | included via EA Play | Yes, and the reason most people should not buy it at all |
| PS5 / Xbox disc, used | $15 to $25 | Yes; the console versions were fine from launch |
If you already pay for Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass, the answer to the title is "install it tonight." If you do not, wait for a sale unless a Star Wars single-player game is the thing you want this month, in which case $29.99 is fair and $69.99 is not.
When Fallen Order is the better call
Play Fallen Order first if you have played neither. Survivor's story assumes you know Cal, Cere, Greez and BD-1, and its opening hour lands harder if you do. Fallen Order is $39.99 list and routinely under $10, also on EA Play, and a tighter 17-hour game. If you only have time for one, Survivor is the better game; if you have time for both, order matters.
Jedi 3
A third game is in development at Respawn; EA has said so, and we track every statement in our Jedi 3 page. Nothing about it changes the decision above. Survivor's story ends on a note that works on its own, and by every public signal the third game is years off.
Verdict
Worth it. Not at list. On Game Pass it is the best value in Star Wars right now; on sale it is an easy $30; on PC it is finally the game the console players got in 2023. The only people who should skip it are the ones who bounced off Fallen Order's combat, because Survivor is more of that, done better, and no amount of patching changes what kind of game it is.
