Warner Brothers suspends [new] purchases for PC version of Batman Arkham Knight

OK, so now what are people who preordered the PC version supposed to do if they want to refund and switch to the PS4 version. Are they not going to have a chance to get the Harley and Scarecrow missions now because it's already released? Any news on that?

Probably gonna be a 10$ dlc two months later.
 
I doubt anyone is gonna give them any work, considering their rep.

I wouldn't be so sure. It's pretty clear that WB knew about this game's issues on PC, and chose to send it out anyway purely because they looked around and saw how many companies *cough* UBI *cough* get away with tossing shit out into the wind. Big pubs aren't as smart as they seem, and when you're pinching pennies the lowest cost is the 'right choice' when you can see far but with no great exactness. If nobody pays for them to do stuff, it won't be because of their reputation per se, but because eventually big publishers will learn from each others experience with pro-consumer models like the steam refund that the old tricks don't work anymore.

Companies that specialize in barely-there work at cheap cost won't survive in the end, but we'll probably see this happen more than just now for a while, I'd wager.
 
You can still buy the game on resellers like GMG, Direct2Drive, Gamesplanet etc. Not sure why its not being removed from there.

It'll take a while to propogate through channels and resellers. Game was launched yesterday and suspended today. There's going to be quite a lot of inertia to deal with, besides timezones
 
Resident Evil 4 on PC (the old one not the new HD rerelease) didn't launch with mouse support, and instead of telling you what keys to press, all the prompts simply said "1", "2", "3", or "4" and you had to try and remember what button you had mapped to actions 1 through 4 to correspond to this.
RE4 and DMC3 come to mind as particularly bad. Dark Souls and FFXIII are a couple of more recent titles with serious problems. Not that AK should be excused, but it's novel to see a pub remove a broken game from the market in order to fix it. Often we're left with community-sourced band aids after releases like this.
 
Their rep from gamers on forums who have no idea what went on behind the scenes?

You really think the fact that sales have been halted because of the poor job they did on one of the most anticipated AAA titles of 2015 won't be known by every potential employer they interact with in the future?
 
Major props to WB.

Most publishers just tell PC gamers something like: "Just deal with it. It's not that bad. We'll fix what we can when we can." But now that WB has stepped up, I hope this will force other publishers to stop treating PC consumers like redheaded stepchildren.

When most people are going to refund your game anyways, you might as well pull this move.
 
OK, so now what are people who preordered the PC version supposed to do if they want to refund and switch to the PS4 version. Are they not going to have a chance to get the Harley and Scarecrow missions now because it's already released? Any news on that?

If I understand what you're asking, that shouldn't matter because the PS4 exclusivity supposedly ends in Aug/Sept and season pass holders will get it either way.

Or, if you're asking about the PS4 dlc, that's included in the case. I walked into a mom/pop shop today and grabbed the PS4 version and it had all three DLC inside (then the 4th, a skin pack, is already free on PSN).

EDIT: I think I'm just answering questions no one asked.
 
Thanks, I'll edit that part out of my post.

Edit: I took it out, cleaned it up. I should know better than to include info I read in passing, and which was old. I didn't read the update to that, so I wasn't aware it was proven false. I really appreciate you letting me know that. I'll make sure not to do that again. I still think it's baffling WB would use this studio to port their biggest release.

I wasnt correcting you, to be clear, just addressing the veracity of the Reddit post. I didn't mean to come across as curt; I'm posting from my phone.
 
When most people are going to refund your game anyways, you might as well pull this move.

Bingo. It's risk mitigation, not some leaf turning folks.

"Taking responsibility" would have meant not saying 'ship it' when you know you're holding onto a shit product.
 
I wouldn't be so sure. It's pretty clear that WB knew about this game's issues on PC, and chose to send it out anyway purely because they looked around and saw how many companies *cough* UBI *cough* get away with tossing shit out into the wind. Big pubs aren't as smart as they seem, and when you're pinching pennies the lowest cost is the 'right choice' when you can see far but with no great exactness. If nobody pays for them to do stuff, it won't be because of their reputation per se, but because eventually big publishers will learn from each others experience with pro-consumer models like the steam refund that the old tricks don't work anymore.

Companies that specialize in barely-there work at cheap cost won't survive in the end, but we'll probably see this happen more than just now for a while, I'd wager.

Well the usual trend that I have seen is that publisher put all blame on developers and then studio is shut down. EA is quite notorious for this kind of activity.
 
I wasnt correcting you, to be clear, just addressing the veracity of the Reddit post. I didn't mean to come across as curt; I'm posting from my phone.

I'll take your word for it. I don't trust Reddit posts half the time lol I get what you are saying though. Also I didn't take it that way. I really appreciate it. I wouldn't want to post something that is questionable. And honestly I'm not that confident in it anyways, and will trust you.
 
If I understand what you're asking, that shouldn't matter because the PS4 exclusivity supposedly ends in Aug/Sept and season pass holders will get it either way.

Or, if you're asking about the PS4 dlc, that's included in the case. I walked into a mom/pop shop today and grabbed the PS4 version and it had all three DLC inside (then the 4th, a skin pack, is already free on PSN).

EDIT: I think I'm just answering questions no one asked.

You may have answered another question I may have had, so no worries. I think for now I'm just not gonna consider buying anything else related to it.... Just gonna play my gimped PC version for the story and set it aside until it receives developer support again.
 
$30 for PS4/XBONE version as compensation.

DO IT WB.

The majority of PC Arkham Knight owners don't have current-gen consoles though. I know I don't, yet. I'd be down for a heavily discounted season pass though, or even free while they're at it.
 
When most people are going to refund your game anyways, you might as well pull this move.

Maybe, but they were giving away free copies with graphics cards. Probably still are. What about those people? They may not have paid money for it but it may have been part of the reason they bought the cards.
 
AAA dev pushed out shit, got caught, paying the price.

This is mandatory for their business to continue as far as im concerned.

You guys are too easy.

I get what you mean, but, I feel like they could have just said a patch is coming and that's it and people would have fell for it. They didn't have to do all this.
 
Unreal game, the 4th in the series, 3rd by Rocksteady. This should have been a slam-dunk on PC. There's nothing unknown here.
 
Well the usual trend that I have seen is that publisher put all blame on developers and then studio is shut down. EA is quite notorious for this kind of activity.

WB can't shut down a studio it doesn't own though. At best they could shut down Rocksteady.

Iron Galaxy's ability to survive would depend on what went on behind the scenes and what it could say to future potential partners, which obviously we aren't going to be privy to.
 
Well the usual trend that I have seen is that publisher put all blame on developers and then studio is shut down. EA is quite notorious for this kind of activity.

It's still not entirely clear who fucked up here -- a lot of people want to drop it on IronGalaxy, and it could very well be their fault, but the buck does stop with WB. They could have at the very last minute pulled the plug before all this exploded in their face, and they didn't. And I think they put their toes in the water because other companies have been able to do the exact same thing and face no consequence.

Now that there are very visible, real consequences for building your games on the cheap and sending them out when they aren't ready, it's good -- but it's still going to take a while I think, and I don't think anyone is going to be fully convinced that this is the fault of IronGalaxy in whole. As I've said a few times already, "taking responsibility" means not shipping when you know it's broken. And either they knew, and shipped, or didn't know, and shipped -- which is worse? People praising them for taking them game down are ignoring that they have nothing to gain from leaving it up :\

I could be wrong, but it seems like they have been involved with other games like Origins which (while they weren't perfect) were a lot better than this. You're right that the trend has been to toss dirt in the eyes of the outsourced company and just swim in the ill-gotten gains; but when there isn't money on either end, it might shake the trend up a bit.

Like I said, the small companies that produce shit will close -- but I think it will still take a few more AAA fuck-ups before everyone has caught on here.
 
You really think the fact that sales have been halted because of the poor job they did on one of the most anticipated AAA titles of 2015 won't be known by every potential employer they interact with in the future?

We don't know what the root cause of the bad end result was.

Didn't you see quotes from Rocksteady? In the first post itself they mentioned our partner Iron Galaxy is working on it. Even Rocksteady doesn't want to take any blame on it.

Yes I did. Of course they're not going to take the blame for a port they didn't do themselves and surely don't want the internet coming to their studio with pitchforks. It's not an indicator of who they feel is truly at fault though. For all we know WB could have been the main reason for things going bad, and they knew about it. Heck, maybe devs are aware of WB's seemingly growing trend of mismanagement.

Both MK and this released fairly close to each other and both were farmed out to relatively small developers. It's not impossible that both signed on with everything looking reasonable, but something happened on WB's side with these projects. Maybe WB mismanaged both of these and did not provide proper support. Maybe both devs sucked and did a bad job or overcommitted.

It's entirely possible WB sucks at managing these ports and setting up port devs for failure and that is known. I would think that stuff would get around in the industry.

I don't know, but it's not impossible.
 
Wow, did not expect that.

I mean, it's what they damn well ought to have done, but I still didn't expect them to do. Maybe now that PC players can refund Steam-bought things much more easily we'll start seeing things like this more often.
 
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Good on WB for actually doing something, I guess.


Still is kind of inexcusable for putting the game out in the state its in. Wasn't this the first time the PC version of a Rocksteady Arkham game came out the same day as the consoles? Maybe they should have wised up and just delayed the PC version one month or so to get it right the first time? I'm not keen on supposed "AAA" games having the PC version delayed but if it means a better game or a functioning game then do what needs to be done. More to the point, if they're going to bother with a PC version these developers need to have some genuine resources sunk into them to make sure its decent, especially if they're going to even try to release it day and date with the console versions.


As it stands, the PC version is going to have a huge stigma attached to it, even if it does get fixed inevitably.
 
Unreal game, the 4th in the series, 3rd by Rocksteady. This should have been a slam-dunk on PC. There's nothing unknown here.

And if Rocksteady did the PC version in-house as they did their prior 2 games, that may very well have been how it went down. But for whatever reason, that's not what happened.
 
Wow, did not expect that.

I mean, it's what they damn well ought to have done, but I still didn't expect them to do. Maybe now that PC players can refund Steam-bought things much more easily we'll start seeing things like this more often.

Double Edged sword I think.

PC versions of games could be delayed weeks to make sure it is working, just so they don't have to deal with refunds.
 
I don't think this is Steam Refunds so much as it is the whole ecosystem. When you go to the store page Arkham Knights has a "Mostly Negative" rating. I''m guessing WB hated seeing that on their AAA game in a AAA franchise. The refunds didn't hurt things however and who knows what would happen if they weren't in place, but I don't think it was the only factor.
 
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