Warner Bros. suspends sales of Batman: Arkham Knight for PC
Warner Bros. have taken to their forums, announcing a suspension of futures sales for the recently released PC version of Rocksteady's popular Caped Crusader series, Batman: Arkham Knight.
Warner Bros., the publisher of Rocksteady's latest release, Batman: Arkham Knight, has released an official statement announcing the suspension of all future sales of Arkham Knights PC copy. Furthermore, the publisher has also revealed that they will be issuing refunds to all consumers who were unhappy with the product. You can view the full statement here.
We want to apologize to those of you who are experiencing performance issues with Batman: Arkham Knight on PC. We take these issues very seriously and have therefore decided to suspend future game sales of the PC version while we work to address these issues to satisfy our quality standards. We greatly value our customers and know that while there are a significant amount of players who are enjoying the game on PC, we want to do whatever we can to make the experience better for PC players overall.
Thank you to those players who have already given valuable feedback. We are continuously monitoring all threads posted in the Official Batman: Arkham Knight Community and Steam forums, as well as any issues logged with our Customer Support (support.wbgames.com). If you purchased your copy of the game and are not satisfied with your experience, then we ask for your patience while these issues are resolved. If desired, you can request a refund at help.steampowered.com (Steam refund policies can be found here: http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds) or the retail location where you purchased the game.
This isn't the first issue the game has run into since its release. The PC version has suffered immensely from poor optimization, and following a reveal by Rocksteady, we learned that a small developer, Iron Galaxy Studios, was responsible for the PC port of the game. The game has also been removed from the Steam Store, with the above statement posted for all potential buyers on the store page.
It's great to see that Warner Bros. is stepping up, and admitting their mistake. However, it does make us wonder if the damage can be repaired so easily.
We've already published our review of Batman: Arkham Knight, and you can see our full thoughts on the game over there.
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Shacknews
replyJosh Hawkins posted a new article, Warner Bros. suspends sales of Batman: Arkham Knight for PC
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Truly, the Riddler has confounded the Bat with this one.
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Don't forget DICE.
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Battlefield 4 had a rough launch as well
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Star Wars can still be a horrible launch! Dice has to live up to some issues.
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I don't think anyone can beat Mortal Kombat
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Wow, I'm surprised that happen.
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They had one job.
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I was just looked through the steam Top Sellers list to see where it was at, and it wasn't even listed anymore. Wow.
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Huh well I suppose it's good they are taking drastic action.
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Game is currently not even cracked because of Denuvo. Not even the pirates would be able to play it!
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StarForce 2.0
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Sort of happened before with NBA live. They shipped copies out to retailers and then cancelled it.
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That's kind of insane. I just finished it with 93% and have not encountered any major issue.
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Yeah, I barely meet the minimum requirements and surprisingly playable with everything turned up. Not sure what kind of problems people are having. I blame it on the user and their broke assed setups.
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Did you do the 60fps thing?
Goddamnit I really want to play, but getting it on PS4 when I have a decent PC just feels wrong :(-
Pretty sure I'm playing on 30fps but with the Nvidia volumetric fog on all bells and whistles enabled at 1080p. There are some minor slowdowns in the batmobile but still perfectly playable. The slowdowns that DO annoy me are the ones when you swipe out a car and it does the Burnout slo-mo thing while you are trying to focus on the car you are chasing.
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I guess I can't buy it for PC anymore now anyway - so I'll just have to wait.
I imagine I'll cave in a day or so and pick up a PS4 copy :)-
There is quite literally no reason NOT to get it on PS4. It is superior to the PC version even if you don't have any technical issues.
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Way to jump to conclusions, asshat, I'm just surprised it's not working for the majority (?) of people. Looks like the min. specs are too low?
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Not really. Remember how Ubisoft handled the fallout after Assassins Creed: Unity?
Yeah, this is much better than that. Unity should have been removed from the marketplace. Warner is at least owning up to how 'Knight is performing for some PC users and hopefully, working in shifts to push to resolve the issues.
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So you don't feel bad that the publisher and developers both knew their game was broken but still released it to recoup costs at the expense of gamers (and NVIDIA's reputation)?
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Wow that's unexpected.
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That's precisely what they did with Origins, so it's not totally out of the question.
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I feel bad for Iron Galaxy Studios. Their reputation is going to take a huge hit.
It might be deserved, but at the same time, we have no idea what kinds of resources they were working with for this project.-
It's really sad because it's a fantastic game otherwise. GOTY contender.
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The PC port was third party outsourced to a company that has a team of 12 people. I'm sorry a game like this and this big should have been done in house. Not by a console gaming developer who stated the PC version should be on par with current consoles.
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It's not deserved. I'm sure WB gave them an impossible task with a laughable deadline and they did the best they could. They should have just delayed the PC version. It's okay, we're used to it.
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IG has done a lot of solid ports and they have a reputation for being extremely proficient with UE3 in particular, so I'd guess they were working under pretty severe limitations (time constraints, lacking documentation about Rocksteady's engine changes, who knows). Taking the Mortal Kombat X port into account, it's reasonable to assume WB currently doesn't care much about PC and budgets its console ports accordingly.
disclaimer: friends with the guy who owns the company, etc. etc.-
I'm not sure I can ever recall a PC port that was outsourced that had amazing results. In any case, I agree it's the publisher's fault.
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I stand corrected
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https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1Obim1CAAAqcSV.jpg
That's a dude I feel I can trust to get it done
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Lang is having a really bad last 7 days.
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Poor Lang, people can't even #engageWithTheContent.
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I've never heard of him until this release. Why does everyone seem to know who this guy is?
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It is all his fault! He should have been working on Batman instead of being at E3 then Disney with his family. Such a selfish man to put that over the valuable time of the PC Master Race.
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That Just freaked me out a little.
I stopped playing Star Conflict and there was a popup from Steam trying to sell me the game. I then restarted my pc and noticed the news from Shack on my feed and it had disappeared from Steam. -
Good. The more attention these "oops, it's completely broken for many setups, but we didn't notice!" launches get, the less of them we'll have them in the future.
I get that some people don't mind a 30 fps lock, some missing effects, and some stutters, and there's nothing wrong with that. But there's nothing wrong with expecting to play PC games at a solid 60 fps either, if you have the hardware for it. If the vast majority of AAA titles can hit that, why would it suddenly be ok for this title to not do so? Especially when it's obviously due to running out of time / lack of proficiency on part of the developers, when the same game is running perfectly well on much slower hardware on the consoles.
I love that there are still people going on about "broken setups" when the publisher has actually pulled the game, and websites are flooded with articles from rather respected techheads not being able to get the game to run properly. That's a weird way of looking at things to me.
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Congrats to B:AK for winning Giant Bomb's 2015 "hottest mess"!
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GMG is now offering immediate refunds, don't have to wait for the patch anymore: http://blog.playfire.com/2015/06/batman-arkham-knight-pc-pulled-from-sale-refunds.html
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This whole thing sucks. I wonder how long something like this is going to take... And I wonder what exactly they're going to do. Are we going to get a complete overhaul with stellar performance and more bells and whistles in our graphics options or are we going to get the bare minimum "here, we turned off motion blur by default so it runs a little better. We're done." I hope they at least give us constant updates so we know what to expect and when to expect it.
Also, I'm never again going to complain when the PC port of a game comes out months after the console versions. -
Shame, the gameplay an everything is top notch. There's also this, which just baffles me.
per Destructoid
"Just as baffling is the fact PC lacks key visual effects seen on PS4 even at its top settings. Ambient occlusion is cut from the game, bokeh depth of field is noticeably dialed back, and the transparency layer used for raindrops is cut from all surfaces as well.
Likewise, rain doesn't appear on Batman or the Batmobile as it does on PS4. The reflective, dewy sheen is missing across the city..."
I believe we had a shacker the other night notice something along these lines.. -
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That or they will bury it and it will never be seen again.
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No way. To far along to dump it now.
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That would be beyond shitty especially given their official statement on the matter: ...we want to thank you for your patience as we work to deliver an updated version of Batman: Arkham Knight on PC so you can all enjoy the final chapter of the Batman: Arkham series as it was meant to be played.
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No because it is WB/Rocksteady who are going to take the hit for it not Iron Galaxy. When Warner puts out the next Batman game there will be a bunch of "but will it work on PC" articles. And the same goes for Rocksteady when they announce their new game from the creators of Batman.
Iron Galaxy is a footnote, it is if Speedtree fucked up and rendered all trees as giant dicks in a game no one is going to blame Speedtree they will blame the developer/publisher for putting out buggy crap.-
Exactly. 90% of people playing probably don't even know who the fuck Iron Galaxy is. The average user probably doesn't even understand the difference between "developer" and "publisher" let alone "outsourced 3rd party".
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No one needs to know about Iron Galaxy. The buck stops at WB, it's their game, their decisions. They could have delayed it, they could even be directly responsible by (for example, no one knows for sure it's a problem) forcing that DRM at the last minute which IG would surely have protested against, or warned they would need more time.
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Oh I agree completely! Sorry if my post was misleading.
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They deserve blame for letting it launch in that state.
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How do we know Iron Galaxy didn't plea with WB to hold it back?
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Might have been misinterpreted I mean that WB and Rocksteady deserve a chunk of the blame. Iron Galaxy fucked up but there was a clear failure on the part of the other parties as they dropped the ball and let it see the light of day.
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Dude, if you let a retard do your homework, and they do a crappy job and you get caught, it is not the retard's fault.
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