How to stop Journey from stuttering on PC

Journey has finally released on PC, the PlayStation classic with the platform’s official magazine called the 5th best game for the PlayStation 3 platform. The fact that Journey has come to PC is a momentous achievement in itself, but on launch day the game has issues, problems which mar an otherwise excellent experience. 

So what’s the problem? The simple answer is that the game is stuttering, presenting PC players with huge performance dips which slow down the game to a crawl and into single digit framerates. Why is the game stuttering? The short answer is server issues, whenever the game tries to find other players, the game’s framerate takes a considerable hit, killing the game’s flow and immersion. 

Until this issue is patched, there is only one solution that we have found for Journey’s stuttering issues, blocking all network connections to the game. We hope that this issue will be patched soon, as this fix prevents multiplayer gameplay, but right now it is the only way that we can get the game to run smoothly.

Right now PC players of Journey have a choice between game-breaking stuttering or losing one of the Journey’s most impactful features, co-op multiplayer. This is not ideal, but at least now gamers have a choice between the two. Hopefully this issue will be patched soon, but Journey should not have launched this way. 

Our recommendation is to wait until Annapurna Interactive patch Journey to mitigate this issue, but if you want to play the game now with a stable framerate, here’s a fix for the game’s stuttering issues. Just be aware that this comes at the cost of the game’s highly impactful social features. 

The Fix 

First, Windows 10 users should enter their OS’ Control Panel, click System and Security and then Windows Firewall. From here, enter Advanced Settings. 

Within your firewall’s Advanced settings, select Outbound rules, and then New Rule… From here, select Program and select a path to your Journey.exe file. This file should be located in Program FilesEpic GamesJourney. 

Now hit Next and then make sure that Block the connection is selected. Hit Next twice and then name your new rule. Then you can hit Finish to create the new Firewall rule. Once this issue is patched, you can simply delete this rule to restore multiplayer functionality.