On October 28th, Batman: Arkham Knight‘s troubled PC port will reemerge from the shadows. Originally released in June, Rocksteady has spent more four months attempting to make the game — ported by third-party developer Iron Galaxy — playable.
Arkham Knight‘s PC release was an unmitigated disaster. Problems ranged from performance drops severe enough to make the game practically impossible to play, to crashing that made it literally so. Numerous graphical glitches removed weather effects, proper shadowing, and caused textures so muddy that at times it was difficult to distinguish what you were looking at.
Days later, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment suspended sales of the PC version. Their provided apology was a drastic oversimplification of the problem and left a bad taste in many consumers’ mouths. WBIE has been predictably reluctant to provide comment or explanation to the numerous outlets investigating the matter, but it’s the complete lack of community interaction that is inexcusable.
An interim patch was released in the beginning of September, repairing many of the most glaring issues, while still leaving the game in a state far from ready for retail space. Early comments regarding the troubled Batmobile simulator suggest that the game remains largely unoptimized.
When a developer or publisher makes such an enormous mistake, the typical approach sees a goodwill offering to placate those affected. In this, WBIE is also taking a different approach. While the patch will catch the PC version up, content-wise, to its console counterparts, the publisher has offered no recompense whatsoever to the dissatisfied masses.
Follow Nate Church on Twitter @Get2Church.
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