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It was already pretty obvious that something went very wrong over at Warner Bros leading up to the PC release of Batman: Arkham Knight but now some sources have come out to provide some additional inside details in to the troubled development of the game's PC port.
You can't buy Arkham Knight on the PC right now and for good reason, the game launched with a lot of problems and it turns out that Warner Bros may have known about them all way ahead of launch. Speaking with Kotaku, sources from within the various teams involved in the development and testing of Arkham Knight have come out to say that “it’s pretty rich for WB to act like they had no idea the game was in such a horrible state”. The source, who worked on quality assurance for the game also said: “It’s been like this for months and all the problems we see now were the exact same, unchanged, almost a year ago.”
So bugs were being reported for quite a while ahead of the game's launch and it seems we also now know why Rocksteady had practically no hand in the PC version of the game. Kotaku's sources said that over the course of development, Rocksteady ran in to complications developing for the new consoles, just getting the game to run was proving a challenge.
Out of the a team of 100 people, around 10 percent of them were tasked with finding bugs in the PC version of the game. On top of that, Warner Bros had QA testers running the game at 720p, well below the 1080p standard PC gamers have grown accustomed to.
“We reported literally thousands of bugs that were specific to the PC version relating to the frame rate. All sorts of fucked up texture issues. The Batmobile in particular has always fucked things up on PC”, one of the sources said.
Due to Rocksteady's complications with the console versions of the game, PC development was handed off to Iron Galaxy Studios, Warner Bros did not want to hire a more reputable PC Port studio as it was worried about plot leaks. Unfortunately, development was slow all around so bugs were being reported faster than the game was being finished. Unfortunately, it seems like once the console versions were finally polished up, Warner pushed the game out of the gate, disregarding the glaring issues with the PC version of the game.
You can read Kotaku's full report, HERE. We would recommend it as it is a very interesting read.
Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.
KitGuru Says: Kotaku's sources were anonymous but they do have a pretty good track record with these things. From what these sources have said, it seems that Warner Bros simply just didn't care enough about the PC version to give it the proper attention it needed before release. Obviously it changed its mind pretty quick after launch day…
“We didn’t want you to know any details, so we handed the work over to a studio who had no skills”
Kitguru wrote “Fucked up” D:
^^^^ The way of the world as I see it. It’s a shame that most “review” companies let shit like this slide so they don’t get any backlash (devs will take away their ability to review games before launch). Which is a huge hit in revenue. This has been happening too long…
So they did what any other publisher would do? Publishers have been ruining PC gaming since forever. Its likely why no one wants to develop for the PC anymore other than the glaring piracy problem, which in turn became more and more popular as games popped out broken and needing patches dozens of times a year.
and?
Firstly KitGuru never specifically had a problem or a rule using swear words, they just avoided them because it’s unprofessional. Secondly, it’s a quote.
The reason Warner Bro’s were quick to pull back the release of the PC version is because they realized that they were actually making real losses from the platform through refunds, as opposed to just leaving the game up and throwing out a few patches over time like we saw with AC:Unity.
Look at it solely from a business point of view, if it wasn’t just about the money they would’ve left the game up regardless and patched it when they could, just to make sure they could get ANY kind of sales instead of forcing themselves to deny anyone an order. At least one major company has seen the impact of the PC gaming market.
Not sure why they thought it’d be a good idea to release a crap port.. I mean they knew for months? What was their idea, promoting sony and microsoft by stating consoles can have more than pc’s (probably with money involved if that’s the case). Or did they just take the fan base for stupid fools?
They’ve dug their own grave and so far it isn’t getting anywhere… this is also the reason why a lot games get delayed for a while instead of getting released. No game gets released perfectly in shade, but this game got released as a perfect.. disaster. GTA, Witcher 3 etc, they all had a great launch from which some had delayed dates. Division is getting delayed for quite some time now, why? Because they care about delivering good products to their fans.
So far all I see from my point of view WB doesn’t care at all. If they did, they would’ve at least hired a bigger company that had sufficient experience in this scale of games. Or they’d delay it.
EAware (EA+Bioware) did the same thing with Dragon Age Inquisition the launch trailer for the PC port even said “made by PC Gamers for PC Gamers” and yet it’s inherently obvious that the entire user interface was designed around a controller.It was as if they were unaware that in PC gaming the default input devices are a keyboard and mouse controllers are optional not mandatory, several months and 7 patches later( 3 of which have been in closed beta complete with NDA’s) and the game is still a mess if you try to play it with M/KB.
In this case though WB should issue full refunds to all PC customers and go back to the drawing board using a company who actually has experience of making PC Games instead of handing development to a studio who has never made or ported a PC Game before 720p might be acceptable for console gamers it is not acceptable for PC Gamers anything less than 1080P@60 should be scrapped.
Well of course they knew, they’ve got armies of internal and external QA. Problem was, they wanted a simultaneous release on all platforms and delaying the console releases again would have pushed the game into mid or late summer, which is a terrible time to release a major title, as a large number of players will be on vacation. Pushing the game into the next big release window would have made it a year overdue, giving shareholders second thoughts about supporting future titles.
No, better for the bottom line to release with a broken PC version and hope the bugs can be ironed out in a day one patch, or just get PR to sweep it under the carpet as best as they can. What they obviously didn’t realise was the full extent of the bugs or how pissed off PC gamers are when they’re presented with yet another shoddy port.
Is this situation of developers just releasing cr*p all the time, is that not what caused the video game crash in the early 80’s ?
I know it won’t cause another crash because we are all far more consumerist these days, but i’m sure the more they keep shaking consumer confidence like this, the more we will see people less likely to buy games on day one at full price, and that will have a knock on effect to the budgets of developers.
Yeah I agree, WB also stated that they will give refunds… after they’ve completely removed all bugs for those who still want a refund then lmao.
The new steam refund system probably wrote history the day Arkham Knight got released on pc.