It appears Warner Bros. has finally thrown in the towel with the PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight. After one of the most disastrous launches in history, the heavily anticipated conclusion to Rocksteady’s Arkham series has been run through the ringer. After being pulled from shelves, news surfaced that the issues were known but the port was deemed “good enough.” The game was finally rereleased a few days ago, with a patch to fix the myriad performance issues. However, plenty of gamers are still experience issues with Batman: Arkham Knight, mostly dealing with plunging framerates, which render the game practically unplayable. In an announcement on Steam, Warner Bros. has offered full refunds through 2015, regardless of playtime.
“We worked hard to get the game to live up to the standard you deserve, but understand that many of you are still experiencing issues,” reads the announcement. They elaborate by offering a full refund through 2015 on both the game and the season pass. The season pass must be returned along with the game; you cannot keep the game but return the season pass. The announcement ends with this worrisome statement: “For those of you that hold onto the game, we are going to continue to address the issues that we can fix and talk to you about the issues we cannot fix.”
This statement seems to imply that the PC port of Arkham Knight has some serious fundamental issues that will take massive resources to take care of. It would be surprising if Warner Bros. continues to devote much time or money to Arkham Knight. The refund is offered through 2015 and will be given regardless of playtime (normally Steam games cannot be refunded if they have been played over two hours), so there is plenty of time to take care of any other objectives in the game if it is still in your library. This is an opportunity to let a huge publisher know that shoddy PC ports will not be tolerated. It is unfortunate, as Arkham Knight is otherwise a very good conclusion to the series, one that our review stated had a shot at being named Game of the Year.
Are you going to turn down your graphics settings and play through Arkham Knight before getting it refunded? Are you going to hold onto it and hope for some optimization? Or can you not return it fast enough? Let us know!
