Report: Batman: Arkham Knight's Broken PC Port Wont Be Fixed Till Fall

[Steven Bogos]

Report: Batman: Arkham Knight's Broken PC Port Wont Be Fixed Till Fall

A leaked email from retailer EB Games claims that Batman: Arkham Knight's woeful PC port won't be fixed until September.

So Batman: Arkham Knight's PC port was so horrendously broken that publisher Warner Bros. actually went ahead and spewing out DLC for the console versions [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/141347-Batman-Arkham-Knight-Removed-From-Steam-Store] meaning a PC fix is right around the corner, right? Well, according to a leaked email from Australian video games retailer EB Games, PC gamers may be waiting on that fix until well into the fall.

"As previously advised," read an internal EB Games email, "we have stopped sales of Batman: Arkham Knight PC while Warner and Rocksteady work on addressing performance issues with the game. The latest information from Warner is that the updates won't be available until Spring. Due to this we have made the difficult decision to recall all PC stock from stores to return to the vendor until an acceptable solution is released."

Obviously, Australia being "down under" means that the "spring" in this email is referring to the months of September - November. From the looks of things, EB is fed up enough with waiting that it's just going to send all those unsold copies back - which seems like a reasonable discourse given that spring (fall) is still two months away.

We've reached out to Warner Bros. for an official comment, and will update this post if they respond differently.

Source: Kotaku Australia [http://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/07/batman-arkham-knight-wont-be-fixed-on-pc-until-spring-claims-leaked-email/]

Permalink

 

[kajinking]

Send all the copies back? Wow! I thought outsourcing was meant to be a method of saving money and maximizing profits, looks like it cost them much more in the long run here

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

So a game with a broken reputation will be competing against Fallout 4? Good luck.

 

[Pyro Yuy]

HahahahahahahahahahahahahahHa...

This is going to end badly.

 

[EndlessSporadic]

I had a lot of faith in this release too. There are so many places this release failed for PC:

- Warner Bros
- Starting the port extremely late in development
- Heavy use of experimental technology
- An aging game engine (it was amazing once, but it is showing its age)
- Potential management issues outside of WB
- Targeting consoles as the primary platform (I'm sorry - this will hold PC games back 99/100 times)

I won't say my faith in Rocksteady themselves has been affected, but I will start being cautious around any of their PC ports since their choice of outsourcing partners is questionable at best. I definitely won't be buying any Warner Bros games until *well* after release anymore.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Send all the copies back? Wow! I thought outsourcing was meant to be a method of saving money and maximizing profits, looks like it cost them much more in the long run here

You know the old saying: There's never enough time to do it right, but there's always enough time to do it twice.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Some companies just want to watch the world burn.

 

[mysecondlife]

For NVIDIA GTX deal, I had a choice between Witcher 3 and Arkham Knight as part of a deal.

The easy choice just because the obvious choice.

 

[lacktheknack]

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Porting.

This is why timed exclusives do not bother me in the slightest.

 

[Elfgore]

Wow... just... wow. I'd say I'm surprised, but I'm really not. Their words may be "We're trying out hardest.", but their actions say "We're just gonna focus on DLC for consoles and get around to the PC port once we make a little more money." Yeah, throw in the fact that around this time PC players are going to be getting X-Com 2 and Fallout 4. I can almost imagine the giant middle finger PC gamers be throwing their way at this time.

 

[Ralancian]

So after making a pretty huge mistake these guys are spending the time to make sure it's right now. Now we're going to jump up and down on them for not doing it fast enough? Isn't that what got them in trouble in the first place.

Sometimes I think the community wants a trainwreck as opposed to a working game.

In the accusations of them focusing on DLC we have no idea of the relative experience of team members. I've worked for people who think every engineer can just pick anything up and instantly do work. I'm sure everyone who can do work on the PC port is. Everyone else however has to do something they may as well work on the other projects.

 

[Rad Party God]

*nom nom nom* I'm just enjoying myself here, this trainwreck is entertaining as hell.

*munch munch munch* Anyone wants some?

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Fuck them. I'm glad they're losing money. You can't just sell a broken product to people knowing full well that it's broken and expect to make money. And as somebody pointed out, they'll be competing with Fallout 4. Hilarious. I won't buy this game until it's less than $10 on Steam.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Porting.

This is why timed exclusives do not bother me in the slightest.

Ditto. Also why I'm thankful I got the PS4 version instead of the PC version.

 

[Dead Metal]

Why are people angry, this doesn't say they won't be working on it and are concentrating only on Console, this says that the game is so broken, that they won't have the patch ready till September. The PC fixes are done by different people than the Console DLC and patches.

 

[Bat Vader]

It sucks that it will take time but I'm happy they they are going to take their time with it and not rush it. Rushing the development of games usually makes the game worse. Looking at you KOTOR 2. Personally though I believe any and all DLC should be free on the PC because of what happened.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

It sucks that it will take time but I'm happy they they are going to take their time with it and not rush it.

No one should ever be happy about a company who rushed a broken game and are then taking their time to fix it. Is there any other entertainment industry who treats its customers with such contempt? I can't think of one.

Does anyone know if the September detail been confirmed, though?

Rushing the development of games usually makes the game worse. Looking at you KOTOR 2.

That's surely not an apt comparison. KotOR II pretty much launched unfinished, but what was there was very solid in terms of build and an experience. Whereas Arkham Knight shipped finished and [mostly] bug fixed alongside an almost self-sabotaged PC version.

Personally though I believe any and all DLC should be free on the PC because of what happened.

I think that'd be only fair (which is probably reason enough for Warner to not do it... ).

 

[BloodRed Pixel]

So after making a pretty huge mistake these guys are spending the time to make sure it's right now. Now we're going to jump up and down on them for not doing it fast enough? Isn't that what got them in trouble in the first place.

Sometimes I think the community wants a trainwreck as opposed to a working game.

In the accusations of them focusing on DLC we have no idea of the relative experience of team members. I've worked for people who think every engineer can just pick anything up and instantly do work. I'm sure everyone who can do work on the PC port is. Everyone else however has to do something they may as well work on the other projects.

This is far too shortsighted.

It's was never the point that they are spending addional time fixing severe bugs - it's _all_ about that they need to spent additional time on it _at all_, when all that what was required from WB was to ship a finished, functional product.

It is a good business pratice to sell you a car and then tell afterwards the tires are to be delivered in two months or so?
Not in my book.

 

[Uhuru N'Uru]

I had a lot of faith in this release too. There are so many places this release failed for PC:

- Warner Bros
- Starting the port extremely late in development
- Heavy use of experimental technology
- An aging game engine (it was amazing once, but it is showing its age)
- Potential management issues outside of WB
- Targeting consoles as the primary platform (I'm sorry - this will hold PC games back 99/100 times)

I won't say my faith in Rocksteady themselves has been affected, but I will start being cautious around any of their PC ports since their choice of outsourcing partners is questionable at best. I definitely won't be buying any Warner Bros games until *well* after release anymore.

Only one failure, Warner Bros. They are the Publisher and own the franchise, they make all the decisions and all the other parties are employees and everything they do is approved by WB.

Always the publisher whose responsible for this sort of mess.

As for rereleasing they might as well wait for a complete version, with all DLC included free, as an apology,
Without that it's nothing but a Steam Sale game, an 80% off one at that.