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Batman: Arkham Knight returns to PC, after 4 months of tweaking

by Mark Tyson on 26 October 2015, 11:01

Tags: Warner Bros. (NYSE:TWX)

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Four months after its sales being suspended by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Batman: Arkham Knight will return to PC, including the Steam digital distribution platform. Sales of the game were suspended back in June due to serious issues with the game's performance on PCs. According to early bird gamers, Batman: Arkham Knight on PC was a poor performer, even on powerful machines exceeding the recommended specs.

At the time of the suspension of sales, Warner Bro. issued a statement of apology "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." Refunds weren't offered carte blance, you had to qualify for Steam's refund policy, for example (i.e. to have owned the game less than 2 weeks, with a play time of under 2 hours accumulated).

Game will be re-released for PC on Wed 28th October, 10 am PDT (5pm in the UK).

This weekend an official statement popped up from a Warner Bros executive in the Steam News Feed. As well as drawing our attention to the re-release on 28th Oct, the bulletin said that "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)". That means PC users will be able to enjoy features such as Photo Mode, Big Head Mode, Batman: Arkham Asylum Batman Skin, and character selection in combat AR challenges.

Those who bought/buy the Season Pass will gain access to various content packs including Crime Fighter Challenge packs 1 through 3, Batmobile Race Tracks, Arkham Episodes Story Packs, and lots of player skins & Batmobiles.

New PC gaming trailers

In other recent PC gaming news, there have been a couple of important new trailers published. Late last week the Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - Adam Jensen 2.0 Trailer debuted on YouTube. The short video highlights the Titan shield, as well as Jensen's new gun-arm augmentations: the Tesla, the Nanoblade and the PEPS.

At the weekend new footage from Tom Clancy's The Division surfaced on YouTube. This Xbox One footage, showcasing weather effects in the game, was supposed to be officially published by now, but hasn't yet emerged on official channels. It's still an interesting showcase for the SnowDrop Engine.



HEXUS Forums :: 5 Comments

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Has it really been 4 months? If so, I finished it over 3 months ago and have been soured by not being able to play the season pass I paid for.

Don't know if I cba to go back for the additional content or just tell Rocksteady where they can stick all their future releases.
The PC conversion wasn't (entirely?) done by Rocksteady, but by their “external PC development partner” Iron Galaxy Studios. I think this may have been the weak link in this case, though they appear to have done plenty of good work before.
I'd opt for doing both. Finish playing what you paid for, then tell Rocksteady where to go.

And in future, no more pre-orders.
3s-gtech
The PC conversion wasn't (entirely?) done by Rocksteady, but by their “external PC development partner” Iron Galaxy Studios. I think this may have been the weak link in this case, though they appear to have done plenty of good work before.

They've never done a proper PC game before, it baffled everyone why they picked such a studio, except to try save money. Like every other publisher, they know PC sales will be much lower than console sales, so tried to cut corners, and it backfired spectacularly
Hopefully Warner Bros at least won't attempt to charge the full £60 (for the Premium Edition) that they charged at release, as I doubt that would go down well with anyone, but knowing WB they might try it, which is a shame as they used to be a decent publisher…