Batman: Arkham Night PC has been removed from sale while the developer works on ironing out serious wrinkles in the game's performance. This move has come just hours after officially issuing details of recommended hardware specs and their associated recommended graphical settings which was intended to "alleviate some of the most frequent issues that some players are experiencing". Obviously user settings tweaks weren't the answer to this game's maladies.
We are used to seeing buggy games released and then hurriedly patched by the publishers/developers. Batman: Arkham Night has caused plenty of gamers to complain about how it performs very poorly on their hardware that is well beyond the recommended specs.
A few hours ago the game developers, Rocksteady Studios, and publishers, Warner Bros Games, seem to have decided enough was enough and acted to suspend sales of the PC game. The main message of official statement read as follows:
"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."
In the meantime the developers will keep an eye on all the official community and Steam community threads harvesting the "valuable feedback" about the game. The developers ask that those who have already purchased the game be patient while bugs are ironed out. Alternatively it is suggested that you could apply for a refund via Steam or the store at which you purchased the game. Refunds aren't being offered carte blanche however, to get a refund you must qualify under Steam's refund policies, for example (i.e. owned game less than 2 weeks, play time of under 2 hours accumulated).
Batman: Arkham Knight, which launched last Tuesday, doesn't seem to have caused many problems for PS4 and Xbox One users. If any HEXUS readers have been playing this new game and have had good or bad experiences please let us know in the comments below.