Final Fantasy 7 Remake files and folders reference a Steam release

(Image credit: Square Enix)

One year and eight months after its PlayStation 4 release, Final Fantasy 7 Remake finally made it to PC, available on the Epic Games Store and only the Epic Games Store from December 16. Have a look in the game files, however, and you'll find a Steamworks subdirectory under Engine/Binaries/ThirdParty. Hop a couple of folders further down and there's also a steam_api64.dll file. It seems likely, as with so many games before it, that Final Fantasy 7 Remake will remain exclusive to the Epic Games Store for the usual 6-12 months before being available elsewhere.

Backing this up further, a look inside the WindowsEngine.ini file shows a reference to a SeamDevAppID. Here that ID is in the unofficial SteamDB, where the staff have already labeled it Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

Another reason you might want to hold off is that Final Fantasy 7 Remake's PC port is a major disappointment, lacking basic options like a Vsync toggle or anti-aliasing settings. Some players are reporting issues with stuttering too. Running around the slums area I see framerates momentarily drop by 30 fps, even with a GTX 3080 and other specs well above the Final Fantasy 7 Remake system requirements.

It's a shame, because I'm enjoying it so far. I didn't play the original until I was an adult, however, so I don't have any of the nostalgia that made Fraser recently declare that Final Fantasy 7 Remake took a dump on his childhood.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.