News Warner Bros. pulls Batman: Arkham Knight from Steam

As good old Jim Sterling pointed out while not quite as bad as EA or Ubisoft, WB are no saints and seem to get away with a lot because it doesn't grab the headlines like the other two. Batman Arkham Origins release was pretty bad as well, with quite a few game breaking bugs that they didn't patch out right away because they were working on DLC!

How they thought releasing a game in this state was a good idea I'll never know. Shame really as performance issues aside it looks like a decent game. I'm guessing this is another case of having out of touch suits pulling the strings for the stock holders benefit: failing to see the PR fallout from something like this causing more issues than putting the time and more importantly money into making sure the game is optimised for all platforms, not just consoles.

 

As seems to be the way with PC gaming recently we are treated like a second hand car. And not a well looked after one.

Batman won't be the last big game to suffer and only real benefit left is price. GTA5 got brought out for 4 consoles before the PC version was finally allowed to be launched. However well it might of been done it was still nearly 2 years after the original PS3 / Xbox 360 launch date which is crazy.

 

pulling it from steam? i think this is the first signs of steam's refund policy working as intended in action...

how much you willing to bet they would have left the game on sale if people could never get a refund and return the game?

 

The game itself is excellent, by the way - I'm really enjoying it (and for once you start off with all the gadgets already available!)

I'm having a few annoyances with frame rate drops, but I can live with that. What's most frustrating is:

No way of toning down or turning off the motion blur
No options for mouse sensitivity (editing the value in the .ini file causes the game to crash)
PS4 Dual Shock controller buttons occasionally being shown as prompts instead of keyboard buttons
..and, of course, the ridiculous framerate cap (which you can override in the .ini file)

Great game, but where on Earth was the QA...

 

Not really. It is a sign that WB made the first smart move in a long series of poor decisions. Remember that many can't get a refund for the game through Steam, they purchased the game elsewhere or got it free with an nVidia GPU and those will be counted as sales at the end of the day I'm guessing.

The problem is more that they seem to class the PC as a lesser platform. If you are going to launch simultaneously then you have to put the time and money into optimising all platforms to an equal level. Yes the PC is more complex to optimise for by its very nature, so it needed more resources to do it properly. This should have been planned from the get go, it isn't news. Instead of allocating it those resources WB went the save money route and give the PC Port to a company that wasn't as experienced as Rocksteady but I guarantee were far cheaper to do the same work.

There is no excuse for this sort of release in 2015 and WB. It has happened before and it will happen again, as the old adage goes ...."Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it"

 

Meh, simple really... PC sales are a 'nice to have', but the reality of the situation is they aren't the major number creators. The consoles are. Has been this way for over a decade. I don't know why the same rhetoric about it is bandied about. Bless, all these people talking about the hideous 'men in suits', the bean-counters who prey on the poor defenceless game creators, causing poor PC games to be released. The fact is, the overriding majority of situations are that everyone (including the evil bean counters and publishing suits) has a 'bill' to pay of some sort or another, and in most cases, as with water, electricity, and even most of us holier than thou PC gamers I suspect, the path of least resistance is followed.

PCs are not as profitable as other platforms. This is the situation. decrying that fact won't change it - continued constructive action and feedback regarding substandards is required, but simply demonising the corporations who are only doing what 99.9% of everyone else would do in their situation is not going to do anything.

My thoughts, anyway...

 

PC devs make a good game it will sell well Diablo 3 has 10mil unit sales. League of legends has made riot masses of cash despite been free to play. For every console success story in sales volume the PC has there own to match it.

Remove CoD and console games sales are really not the huge business that people assume. GTA 5 was the last console game that's been classed as a global seller. CoD breaks the $billion mark often enough but there's no other game close to it.

PC gaming for the company to make cash has to be popular and playable on many systems. Diablo 3. Starcraft 2, gta5 all full fill that and are all huge sellers.

I own PC Xbox one and ps4, my issue with the new consoles is price for games. Batman is avail if you look for 1/3 of psn or Xbox live price for full game and seasons pass. And that's a similar tale to most joint new releases on both platforms.

They do get quiet ripped off for what they are purchasing.

 

I got it free with my 980ti and, whilst I would really love to play it, I'd rather wait until it's fixed before firing it up.

No doubt the pressure of all the Steam refunds has been a good thing in this case and long may it continue.

 

Sorry but where are you getting those numbers from?

The reason I ask is because last time I checked PC gaming now brings in more money than console gaming, and predictions show that trend is only going to continue.

 

It's difficult to fathom how they thought, even with saving money, that farming out the port to a 12 person outfit would go down well. Their track record isn't all that either.

I preordered early so I have a physical 5 DVD boxed version of the PC game and while it runs alright ish on my high end system well in excess of recommended specs, it still doesn't look as good as the PS4 version despite all the settings being maxed out.

This isn't just a case of shoddy performance, it actually does not even have the graphical features or fidelity of the PS4 version. That is not acceptable. It's good they've pulled it. However, this is all just bad damage control. I mean Rocksteady community person saying the PC issues are extremely important to them. Too little too late and clearly untrue. If anybody there cared it wouldn't have released in this state. Sounds to me they thought they'd try their luck and they've gotten badly burned.

It's disgusting really when you consider the hype for this game and the huge sums of money the franchise has made, a good portion of which has come from PC sales of all the games. WB games becomes another publisher I'll never preorder a game of again joining the Ubisoft in the preorder blacklist.

 

a game , developed for console - ported to pc , by a console game developer! surely not a reciepe for disaster at all was it....

 

Anyone who still has it and wants to play before they re-release it should try putting it on an SSD and making sure that PhysX is set to GPU only in the NVCPL (this is not the default setting).

Working fine so far on my rig, doesn't drop below 30fps, but I've kept the 30fps framecap.

I can see with their previous track record why they thought it would be an idea to outsource so they could get simoultanious release, although their choice of company is definitely suspect.

Personally I'm playing Witcher 3 first, but I'm glad Rockstar are going to do a proper job.

 

Good tips but I refuse to play it at 30fps, I'll wait until it's been fixed.

 

not really sure where this 30 fps comes from as I've not edited the ini file yet with in game fraps no v sync I get between 30 and 62 fps. The only way I get 30fps perm is if v sync is enabled it also kills performance by about 20%. Seen it go as low as 14fps with vsync but never sub 30 without it.

 

Simple fact of the situation. Console gaming is massiveley more prevalent than PC. This would not be the case if it werent more profitable for the major companies as an average. I dont need to quote figures that prove the sky is blue...

I genuinely hope that what you refer to is right though, I hope that PC gaming is actually more profitable than consoles. This will inevitably show a decrease in consoles and an increase in PC games, by consequnece?

 

PC gaming may bring more more money than console gaming, for game console publishers though, consoles are still their bread and butter and making decent ports usually provide little to no profit at all. Well at least that's what are bosses say.

 

If it's a simple fact would you mind providing those facts, it's all well and good making unsubstantiated claims but you can't expect anyone to believe you unless you're willing to backup the claims you make.

Saying that console gaming is massively more prevalent than PC seems to be little more than your perception, the truth seems to point to that being a misconception as there are 900 million PC gamers worldwide vs around 262 million consoles.

 

League of legends was reported to have more active concurrent players than both consoles combined just last year.