Warner Bros have spent the last four months delivering a glowing example of how not to release a game on PC. For many, Arkham Knight was unplayable when it released, plagued with frame rate woes and missing textures – it ruined the experience. For the lucky few it worked for, it was far from optimal and came with the bare minimum of graphics options.
Apparently Warner Bros knew about Batman: Arkham Knight’s PC problems months before release.
But still, the game was released. Fortunately Steam refunds were on the side of the consumers, and Steam reviews were vocal in their disappointment. The game got ripped to pieces on its Steam page, and was pulled while Rocksteady got it up to standard.
In the meantime we’ve had a few interim patches for those who haven’t bothered with the refund (or perhaps they got it free with their GPU like me), but nothing hugely substantial. Well now the patch that will hopefully solve all of its issues finally has a release date. Warner Bros issued the following statement:
“At 10 am PDT, Oct. 28th, Batman: Arkham Knight will be re-released for the PC platform. At the same time we’ll also be releasing a patch that brings the PC version fully up-to-date with content that has been released for console (with the exception of console exclusives).
“This means that next week, all PC players will have access to Photo Mode, Big Head Mode, Batman: Arkham Asylum Batman Skin, and character selection in combat AR challenges.”
I will be very surprised if the PC version sells well as it could have after all this. No doubt lots of people will have lost interest by now, and I only expect that number to rise when Fallout 4 launches in a few weeks. I can’t say I feel sorry for Warner Bros.