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.
The Batman: Arkham fans have continually supported the franchise to its current height of success, and 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.
Wow, seriously wow. This is a good move on Warner Brothers part. It is just the 1st step towards repairing the damage done.
You know what's hilarious. There hasn't been one gameworks title that hasn't taken backlash. I have no remorse for Warner Bros. I point and laugh at their general direction.
The whole "press button to get refund" bodes well for future releases. It gives us gamers some leverage against publishers we never had before. Usually they would rush something out the door, people would moan and there would be gnashing of teeth but they could ignore it because the sale was made and there were no backsies. Nothing speaks louder than seeing the money you thought you just earned drain away from your bank account.
Is this a win for consumers? A game with poor performance was pulled from steam while the devs work out the issues. Apparently the steam refund system was costing the company tons of money.
Do you think could finally solve the problems many PC games have had? Discouraging devs to release broken games? Does this mean pre-ordering games is okay now?
This looks like a good thing if it makes the publisher suffer for releasing broken games. Not sure that will be the outcome though. WB has a bad track record, was kinda expected that the game would have issues. But pulled from Steam? Kinda unexpected.
I think it's a good thing. Hopefully this will discourage devs from releasing games on steam that simply don't work. I'm still torn on preordering. Now that a game can be refunded I see of it as less of a risk, but I still think it's wrong to give devs money before the game comes out. And honestly, what's the point of preordering on PC? You used to preorder to get a game THE DAY it came out, but with PC we can get that anyway. I just don't see the point anymore. For consoles, maybe, but I know lots of people buy digital there as well.
@Ethereal I'm still in the camp of never preordering. In my mind it sends a message to the developer of: I'm not buying your game until I know it works. I also wait for reviewers I trust to review it before I even buy it. No one on PC should Preorder any digital game. The only time to preorder is to get a physical special edition for a beloved and well know franchise such as Fallout 4 Pip Boy Edition.
I think I agree with you. But even with the special preorder bonus's, we should probably find a way to stop all preordering. If people preorder just to get the goodies it encourages devs to still make games available for preorder. Which means some of the less informed will still preorder the games.
I'm glad this has happened. A good precedent has been set and hopefully it will put an end to crappy ports. This is as bad as AC Unity. Let's hope times are changing!
Wow. What a blunder. Glad it was pulled. We can throw yet another unfinished game onto the pile of recent releases. This is precisely why I will not pre-order anything these days and I always wait at least a few weeks to purchase games after launch. Unfortunately, the industry (with regards to "AAA" publishers) is really in a sad state.
I have a feeling they are only doing this because steam refunds now exist, they probably got a flood of refund request because of the poor state of the game and are now FORCED to fix the problem if they want to make a good amount of money of the pc version. I'm really glad steam put this in, now companies are thinking twice about what they do and say.
While I like that they are taking action, I fear that the influx of steam refunds will just scare them off and they simply wont bother with PC any more.
Although what should be being hammered home and is being missed is, to quote Linus Torvalds "Fuck you nVidia". But hey another day another sucker.
I hope it comes back and is good. I hope they put a good port team on it now and not some 12 mobile devs. I hope they cancel all contracts with nVidia and most of all I hope they come with new games to PC rather than looking at the financial side and saying not worth it, back to the consoles boys.
Total agree, lol a remember before is was released all the stores were trying to get me to pre-order it, and I was like No thanks I don't Pre order... because we all know this shit happens on release day...
It's a good thing, but completely ridiculous that they allowed a game to be released this broken. Especially after doing the exact same thing with Arkham City, just to a lesser extent. That game had quite a few issues, both graphically and game play wise simply because little effort was put into porting it to PC. I even waited a few months before getting Arkham City (on top of the month delay between the console release and PC release) and still had stuttering issues and whatnot, even on low graphics settings. They were eventually fixed, but it took a solid 6 to 8 months iirc.
I don't know, maybe they thought the PC port would be easier this generation because the consoles are running hardware that is much closer to consumer level PC hardware than they have in the past, so they put even less effort into the port. Seemingly to the point of not even quality testing it themselves before release. Just, sad.
Regarding pre-order, there is a local saying: "You don't sell the skin before you shot the bear". It's not like they will "run out" of games. Only reason to pre-order would be to pre-load it from Steam. But if the launch version has irritating bugs, then there is no reason at all. Seems you need to wait a month or two before the most glaring bugs are fixed, and some AAA publishers doesn't seem to care much. Look at Ubisoft, EA etc. Some games are very buggy months after launch.
There has been a lot of complaining from people about the new Caramgeddon game, some of it is very well deserved. But they are a tiny dev, a kickstarter game. Ubi, EA, WB etc are massive companies that are giving us the short end of the stick and tells us to like it. If Steam refunds can fix this I would be very happy.
I think it was good of them to stop the sale, but it should have been released working in the first place.
To comment on the preordering, I see no point to preorder games anymore, within a few months it will go on sale. I can see if you get something else besides just the game but even then, most of the crap you get with preorders is just that, crap.
