Warner Bros. Pulls Batman: Arkham Knight from Sale on PC
Although PC gamers often get the very best experiences in terms of games thank to the better hardware and optimization, they can also get a pretty raw deal when multiplatform games get poor ports. Since its release on Tuesday 23 June, Batman: Arkham Knight has been plagued with problems on the PC. While the console versions seem to be without any major issues, players for the Windows, Mac and Linux versions are reporting a whole collection of concerns.
These range from frequent crashes that require restarting the software to game-breaking bugs and performance issues. Textures often fail to load, the framerate constantly drops to staggeringly slow rates during combat and fast movement while graphical features that are present on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions are missing altogether.
It seems the fault for the poor port may in fact not lie with developer Rocksteady Studios. While the studio has worked on the PC versions of their previous Batman titles, Warner Bros. decided to hire external developer Iron Galaxy Studios to handle the PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight. However, Warner Bros. must also take a good share of responsibility for the release considering the fact that they are the publisher and responsible for quality assurance and testing.
With the outcry becoming ever louder, Rocksteady and Warner Bros. have now announced that they are pulling all sales of Batman: Arkham Knight and asking those who are upset to get a refund from the store they bought the game from.
In a statement, Rocksteady Studios told the BBC news website that: “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.
“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.”