Civilization VII was released almost a month ago, a simultaneous launch on PC and PS5. We’ve seen plenty of complaints from PlayStation players, but also quite a bit of praise for Firaxis’ latest, which really is a wonderful game at its core. Perhaps the strangest thing about the affair is that the famously reluctant Sony is seemingly issuing full refunds for the game, provided you push for one.
Take the following with perhaps a single tile of the salt resource, but a post over on the Civilization subreddit is gaining traction. A player claims to have asked for, and received a full refund for the game on PS5, posting what certainly appears to be part of a chat log with PlayStation’s support service.
We have no real reason to suspect it’s a phony, and others in the thread have alleged they have successfully received a refund for the game despite being well outside its usual 14-day criteria. Still, others claim to have been unsuccessful when attempting to get money out of Sony, and that we’d believe with every fibre of our being; as we said, it’s a strange situation.
This scribe has spent a fair bit of time playing Civ VII on PS5 Pro in the past few weeks and has had quite the journey, it must be said. After repeatedly failing to get more than 20 turns into a dozen or so separate multiplayer games with a patient PlayStation friend, constant crashes and desyncs caused us to put those plans on hold.
Paradoxically, we’ve had a smooth experience playing solo, putting a few dozen hours in. We can recall no crashes and haven’t experienced any graphical oddities other PS5 players have reported. In fact, now that we’ve had some time to marinate and get used to some of its bolder design decisions, Civ VII is probably our favourite entry in the storied series. Looking around, that doesn’t seem to be the case for all players. Curioser and curioser.
What has your Civilization VII experience been on PS5? Are you experiencing crashes, bugs, or glitches? If so, have you approached Sony for a refund? Further, have you managed to get any blood of that particular stone? Record your responses for future generations to read in the comments section below.
