GMG Offers Batman: Arkham Knight PC Refunds if WB Doesn't Fix it

[Steven Bogos]

GMG Offers Batman: Arkham Knight PC Refunds if WB Doesn't Fix it

If players are still experiencing issues after the next Arkham Knight patch, GMG will offer full refunds.

You may have heard that the experience of trying to play Batman: Arkham Knight on PC is... well... its rather generous new refund system [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/141320-Players-of-the-PC-Version-of-Arkham-Knight-are-Reporting-Gameplay-Issues]. But if you bought your game from a 3rd party CD key re-seller, you're kind of S.O.L. Unless you're a Green Man Gaming customer that is, who have offered to process full refunds for its customers if Warner Bros. and Rocksteady can't fix the PC version of the game in the next patch.

"We want you to enjoy your game, but if after the fix has been released, you still cannot play your game, we will process refund requests for the game," said a GMG rep in an official blog post [http://blog.playfire.com/2015/06/batman-arkham-knight-pc-guidelines.html].

The biggest issues players are having with the game are related to performance: the game leaks memory, has random lag, and causes players to encounter frequent glitches. Furthremore, the game is capped at 30 FPS, and requires players to actually edit an .ini file to uncap (something that WB actually advises players not to do...)

So what's the lesson we've learned from all of this? The same lesson you already should now by now. As Cartman himself best puts it: "If you pre-order, all you get is a dick in your mouth" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV69DyOuzbE].

Source: Green Man Gaming [http://blog.playfire.com/2015/06/batman-arkham-knight-pc-guidelines.html].

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[FirstNameLastName]

Good, it's about time "every game will have a few minor issues on launch" ceased to excuse "this game is so bad it's unplayable". Hopefully with the new refund policies on Steam companies who release broken games on PC will not just have their name dragged through the mud but also realise that releasing broken games isn't a profitable business decision.

 

[Strazdas]

GMG should offer refunds now, regardless of what patch we are at. still, i guess baby steps....

 

[Bindal]

GMG should offer refunds now, regardless of what patch we are at. still, i guess baby steps....

Remember that GMG can't take the game back, so their form of refund allows you to keep the game after getting the refund. After all, they sell you a key, you activate the key, game gets added to your Steam account.
So, having them to wait for a patch is reasonable in this situation.

 

[Strazdas]

GMG should offer refunds now, regardless of what patch we are at. still, i guess baby steps....

Remember that GMG can't take the game back, so their form of refund allows you to keep the game after getting the refund. After all, they sell you a key, you activate the key, game gets added to your Steam account.
So, having them to wait for a patch is reasonable in this situation.

Could they not contact steam for deactivation of refunded keys?

 

[fix-the-spade]

Could they not contact steam for deactivation of refunded keys?

They certainly could, then Valve will tell them to shove it up their arse because:

Steam does not (officially) allow the resale of CDKeys.
GMG does not release details of where their CD Keys come from.
Steam expressly will not honour refunds of games gifted or bought from sources outside the Steam store.

All of these resellers exist in a very grey area. They aren't getting their keys direct from Valve and usually not even publishers, but from regional distributors (or occasionally, falling off the back of a digital lorry). More often than not they're bypassing regional pricing too, which is a whole other issue in of itself. This has come back to bite consumers a couple of times, notably Natural Selection 2 and Sniper Elite 3, but also Far Cry and Witcher where the devs have expressly told people not to buy from resell sites.

I bought a couple of games from resellers last year and stopped when I noticed that the games were showing up as gifts on my account rather than retail sales. These guys only continue to do business because neither Valve nor publishers have expressly stamped them out yet, which is a precarious place to be. I doubt any of them want to attract more than the absolute minimum of attention possible from Valve and the big publishers.

 

[K12]

The sales on Steam have been suspended which counter-intuitively make me think they're taking these issues seriously enough to actually fix the majority of them,

Does anyone know if a AAA game has voluntarily suspended it's own sales on steam before?

 

[Strazdas]

Could they not contact steam for deactivation of refunded keys?

They certainly could, then Valve will tell them to shove it up their arse because:

Steam does not (officially) allow the resale of CDKeys.
GMG does not release details of where their CD Keys come from.
Steam expressly will not honour refunds of games gifted or bought from sources outside the Steam store.

All of these resellers exist in a very grey area. They aren't getting their keys direct from Valve and usually not even publishers, but from regional distributors (or occasionally, falling off the back of a digital lorry). More often than not they're bypassing regional pricing too, which is a whole other issue in of itself. This has come back to bite consumers a couple of times, notably Natural Selection 2 and Sniper Elite 3, but also Far Cry and Witcher where the devs have expressly told people not to buy from resell sites.

I bought a couple of games from resellers last year and stopped when I noticed that the games were showing up as gifts on my account rather than retail sales. These guys only continue to do business because neither Valve nor publishers have expressly stamped them out yet, which is a precarious place to be. I doubt any of them want to attract more than the absolute minimum of attention possible from Valve and the big publishers.

I thought GMG was one of the official ones like Humble Store or Amazon. I guess not, then. Glad i never bought anything from them, then.

Does anyone know if a AAA game has voluntarily suspended it's own sales on steam before?

I think one of FF games were temporarely removed from sale in 2010, thought i might be remmebering wrong.

 

[FoolKiller]

So what's the lesson we've learned from all of this? The same lesson you already should now by now. As Cartman himself best puts it: "If you pre-order, all you get is a dick in your mouth" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV69DyOuzbE].

That's professional of you to say.

And pre-ordering is the same as buying it on the first day at the store. I got both the PS4 and Xbox 1 versions and they run perfectly fine even without the day one patch.

The lesson that should be learned is that you need to buy a game on the system it was designed for by the developer that you trust. Rocksteady weren't even the ones doing the coding for the game on PC. The problems arose because someone outsourced it to a small group of people.

 

[Oly J]

So what's the lesson we've learned from all of this? The same lesson you already should now by now. As Cartman himself best puts it: "If you pre-order, all you get is a dick in your mouth" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV69DyOuzbE].

That's professional of you to say.

And pre-ordering is the same as buying it on the first day at the store. I got both the PS4 and Xbox 1 versions and they run perfectly fine even without the day one patch.

The lesson that should be learned is that you need to buy a game on the system it was designed for by the developer that you trust. Rocksteady weren't even the ones doing the coding for the game on PC. The problems arose because someone outsourced it to a small group of people.

you certainly have a point about knowing which developers to trust but if a game is "designed" for one system and not another, it shouldn't be made available on the latter in the first place, no consumer should have to learn lessons from developer/publisher screwups. and I don't actually own a PS4 yet (planning to get one Thursday wallet permitting) and if I want a game badly enough to pay full price for it, (luckily I didn't for this one) well, in this particular case the PC is the only system I own that the game is available on (though right now it isn't) I was always intent on getting it on my eventual PS4 anyway but I can only assume that other such people in my position will want to play it on the PC because they actually y'know, have a PC to play it on.

I almost never buy day-1 and I absolutely never pre-order, especially on PC precisely because I am wary of bad ports such as this, but this kind of caution simply should not be required of customers, it is just not our job.