Protecting Players From Themselves: Ys X Proud Nordics Dev Says Ultra Settings Should Not Be the Optimization Litmus Test

PC gaming performance discourse has gotten increasingly binary in the last few years. A game either runs perfectly or it is branded unoptimized, and too often that verdict is delivered after someone cranks every slider to Ultra, watches framerate dip, then calls it a day. The result is a performance conversation that is loud, fast, and frequently missing context.

That exact dynamic is what PH3 developer Peter Durante Thoman addressed in a new interview with RPGFan, where he explained why studios sometimes have to, in his words, protect players from themselves. The core idea is not about excusing bad performance, it is about highlighting a perverse incentive baked into how performance is judged.

Durante’s argument starts from a practical reality: on PC, developers choose what labels like Ultra actually mean. Ultra is not a standardized benchmark across games. It is a design choice. When players judge optimization purely by Ultra performance, it pressures developers to do something that is frankly more optics than engineering: scale back Ultra, or rename settings tiers to make results look better.

Durante even lays out the thought experiment plainly. If a studio removed Ultra entirely, renamed Very High to Ultra, and changed nothing else, a portion of the community would instantly claim the game is better optimized. Same code. Same performance. Different label. That is the trap.

From a delivery standpoint, PH3 positions its PC work around scalability, not just hitting a single target spec. Durante describes building settings that can scale from low power devices like Steam Deck to high end rigs with what he calls monster GPUs. That breadth matters because PC is not one platform, it is an ecosystem spanning handhelds, mid range desktops, and top end enthusiast builds.

The uncomfortable truth is that truly scalable PC options require extremes. If you want a game to age well, it needs headroom beyond today’s console equivalent. That inevitably means settings some users can turn on right now that they should not, at least not without understanding the tradeoffs. Ultra is often that space. It is not always meant to be the default, it is sometimes meant to be aspirational and forward looking.

There is also a preservation angle that lands strongly for anyone who plays PC as a long game. During visits the idea of returning to older titles with new hardware and seeing them in a new light. That is one of PC gaming’s biggest competitive advantages. It is why older ports that scale well can feel like stealth remasters years later. It is also why disincentivizing high end options, simply to avoid forum backlash today, is a strategic loss for the platform over time.

The irony is that the audience most likely to hammer Ultra for benchmarking is also the audience most likely to benefit from future proof options, because they upgrade frequently. But if the cultural norm becomes Ultra equals required, developers will respond rationally: they will ship fewer extreme options, narrower scalability, and more conservative settings tiers that map to safe expectations.

That is how you end up with a world where PC ports look fine in the present but age poorly, and where the only way to see an older game in a better light is to wait for an official remaster. That is great for selling the same game twice, but it is not great for the PC value proposition.

A more mature performance conversation would treat Ultra as a ceiling, not a baseline. Judge optimization on sensible targets like High at common resolutions for mainstream hardware, then evaluate Ultra as an optional stretch goal for enthusiasts and future GPUs. If the community shifts toward that framing, studios get breathing room to build real scalability instead of playing label games.

For players, it is also a reminder that settings are a toolkit, not a flex. If you want stable performance, tune for your hardware and your target frame rate, then measure the result. If you want to stress test a port, that is valid too, but it should be called what it is: a stress test, not a universal verdict.

When you evaluate a PC port, do you test at High because it is realistic, or do you go straight to Ultra and treat that as the standard?