PC gamers looking forward to a stable version of Batman: Arkham Knight will be saddened to learn that the notoriously awful port isn’t going to see a fix any time soon.
That’s according to an internal email from Warner Bros. Interactive, which has been subsequently handed to Kotaku Australia.
“As previously advised we have stopped sales of Batman: Arkham Knight PC while Warner and Rocksteady work on addressing performance issues with the game,” the email reads.
“The latest information from Warner is that the updates won’t be available until Spring. Due to this we have made the difficult decision to recall all PC stock from stores to return to the vendor until an acceptable solution is released.”
Australia’s Spring is the equivalent of the northern hemispehere’s autumn. Assuming Warner is able to stick to that timeline, any major fixes are delayed until at earliest two months from now.
The PC version of Arkham Knight was ported to PC by Killer Instinct: Season 2 developer Iron Galaxy. Despite being locked to 30fps and missing most of the standard performance customization options, Arkham Knight is a bit of a mess on PC, with thousands of users unable to play the game at an acceptable frame rate - if they can even get the game to run in the first place.
Following widespread criticism about the state of the port, publisher Warner Bros. removed the PC version from sale until such time as it could meet expectation. Despite not being involved in the original port, Rocksteady has taken responsibility for fixing it up, with a helping hand from NVIDIA.
However, sources from within Warner Bros. Quality Assurance department recently revealed that the publisher had been made aware of the game’s poor state months before it went on sale - but decided to go ahead with the launch anyway.
This latest development won’t do much to appease gaming fans on PC, who are also currently unable to access the recently-released Batgirl: A Matter of Family DLC. Not that they’re missing out on much - we scored it a below-average 4/10 in our review.
Dale Morgan reviewed Batman: Arkham Knight for Continue Play, scoring it 9/10. “Asylum and City delivered fantastic narratives which pulled you through the campaign and left you wanting more, and Arkham Knight is no different,” Dale wrote in his Batman: Arkham Knight review.
“It’s not the best game in the series – that honor is still held by Asylum – but Batman: Arkham Knight is a game you want to savor, a game that you’ll want to take your time with simply because you don’t want it to end.”
