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[PHOENIXZERO]

Unprecedented move...especially since 98% of my current playthrough was JUST FINE. Game is extremly far away from any sort of "unplayable state", but they thought that their customers deserve better. So... MAJOR kudos to them.

In the last few years Ubi, Blizz and EA straight up released totally UNPLAYABLE games on PC and almost never bat an eyelid when their communities went apeshit.

How much RAM do you have? Are you running the game off an SSD?

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.

I was content with waiting for the GOTY version before this game was added to the NVIDIA promotion that in turn is exactly why I pulled the trigger on buying a 970. I was content to wait until next year or even longer to upgrade from my SLI'd 1GB 460s because of how many old games on PC and PS3 I still have to play though.

So what's actually wrong with this game? I looked up this guy's review, but all I heard was a bunch of technical terms and not about anything about how the actual game plays like if it's slow or filled with glitches.

Memory leaks, major stutter problems probably mostly from playing off an HDD which I would wager mainly affects people with 6-8GB of RAM because the game eats through your physical RAM and your page file like Garfield eats lasagna. If like many you've fixed your page file to only a couple GB or less (assuming you're using one at all) and you only have 8GB of RAM you will eventually crash due to being out of memory from what I experienced 4GB was the absolute minimum to prevent it from doing so though I increased it to 8GB and...

This is on top of using a ton of GPU memory when it shouldn't need to. Even on low settings the game for me reached 2.6GB (over 3.5GB physical RAM used too) in VRAM usage while the minimum requirement is a 2GB card on the NVIDIA side. At regular settings I saw the game hit 3900MB on my 970, it however did not cause any significant performance issues. I had a stutter in a cutscene but I don't know if that was from this, the game moving data to the GPU from the RAM or page file access happening.

The actual game play is fine. It's a batman ass batman game. The performance of the game is just awful. FPS that bounces everywhere, missing textures, horrible performance in the batmobile, missing settings that should be there for a pc port, among a lot of other stuff. The performance of the game is the problem, not the actual gameplay.

This covers most of the rest.

 

[CouchMaster]

Was this posted?

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterra...expected_30fps_capped_the_recommended/cshc58i

Apparently the Nvidia Gameworks video was sped up to 60fps and the in-game voices were masked by loud music to hide the fact that it would otherwise sound funny.

 

[texhnolyze]

Was this posted?

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterra...expected_30fps_capped_the_recommended/cshc58i

Apparently the Nvidia Gameworks video was sped up to 60fps and the in-game voices were masked by loud music to hide the fact that it would otherwise sound funny.

There was even a thread for that.
Unconfirmed though.

 

[Saprol]

Props to WB for taking this seriously.

They're basically cockblocking themselves from making money by doing so.

Hopefully a fix is implemented soon.

Now that Steam gives refunds, they're bleeding money if they leave it as is. To do anything else would just drive people away from the next WB PC game.

 

[Chanser]

This is putting me off buying a 980ti.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Ah yes, good morning.

In either case, it is ultimately WBs decision, rather than RS or any individual studio. In this case I suspect that the overwhelming negative press and refund fiasco has put them in a position where they will be fixing this, at least partially, as soon as they possibly can. It may not end up as a "good port", but they will want to get it into a playable state. Whether RS themselves handle it, or whether they just let the existing PC partner have more time to fix it, or maybe even get a new third party to do it, nobody can say. But something will happen.

 

[Obliterator]

I always wonder how much profit is being made when the game is sold for $10 or so during a sale.

Well I'm a numbers geek (its part of what I do for a living) so let me hook you up. Big thanks to Steamspy for helping with the tools.

Also let me preface this by saying the tally will not be 100% accurate due to games that come in bundles or have different pricing by country. Some will be a bit higher, some a bit lower than this but should give you a basic idea of what we are looking at in terms of dollars.

So using only the games that qualify in my over 1 full year old, and over 200k units the data brakes down as so. This is for the 2 week Summer Sale period.

Total number of games over 1 year old and over 200k sales: 11

Revenue estimations of the combined 11 titles: $11,700,00 or roughly slightly over 1 million in revenue each on average

Biggest earner: Fallout 3 GOTY and Metro Last Light at 1.5 million each

Lowest earner: Terraria at $560,000

Total Units sold between them: 2.6 million



In conclusion, the people that say "Well PC games all sell for dirt cheap and the devs don't make any money off of them" have no idea what they are talking about and should simply be informed to do their due diligence and research. Also keep in mind that devs and pubs will see much higher profit margins on these titles than they wiill any retail disc sold in a store.

EDIT: Also one more note, I did not use Valve games as they aren't a 3rd party on Steam. I left out all of their sales figures, which would have grown the list by a pretty large margin in both units and revenue.

 

[CouchMaster]

There was even a thread for that.
Unconfirmed though.

Oh my bad. But there's like seven Batman threads on the first page lol.

 

[publicpwnerer]

There's no guarantee that they intend to fix the game, only that they're ceasing digital sales to save face.

They (Warner Bros.) make billions of dollars in revenue annually and decided to get some shit tier dev team to port it, cutting costs (Cause' that sweet revenue). They ensured that the game was only reviewed on console, and now it sits at an 89 metacritic. They knew exactly what they were doing.

 

[neorej]

Good, now get the team that did the shadow of Mordor PC version on the code and fix everything wrong.

 

[X-arlo]

I always wonder how much profit is being made when the game is sold for $10 or so during a sale.

Even though unit prices may be low, it's literally a stream of free money building up over time. Not to be scoffed at, but you could also argue that for the same reason there are few incentives to release a pc game in good working order right from the beginning, when sales are low to the point of being irrelevant, and when patching has become so commonplace.

 

[Obliterator]

Even though unit sales may be low, it's literally a stream of free money building up over time. Not to be scoffed at, but you could also argue that for the same reason there are few incentives to release a pc game in good working order right from the beginning, when sales are low to the point of being irrelevant, and when patching has become so commonplace.

Witcher 3 sold 1.4 million units in 2 weeks. GTA V sold over 1 million units 1st week.

PC sales at launch are not always low. This is a myth.

For an example of how a newer, popular title can perform in its first summer sale look no farther than Ark: Survival Evolved.

It moved over 400,000 units for over 10 million dollars in revenue.

 

[Grief.exe]

Witcher 3 sold 1.4 million units in 2 weeks. GTA V sold over 1 million units 1st week.

PC sales at launch are not always low. This is a myth.

Clarification, GTAV sold 1 million units on Steam in the first week. It may have gotten close to doubling that number due to all retail copies activating on Rockstar Social Club.

 

[BouncyFrag]

 

[DeepEnigma]

I have no idea why these people couldn't have seen how obviously terrible this PC port was. How the fuck could they be so obtuse as to actually release the damn thing?

Agreed. Hindsight is 20/20, but you would think the PC version of all versions to release like this, someone would have said, "you know?! I think we need to delay this version."

That would have cost them far less.

 

[X-arlo]

Witcher 3 sold 1.4 million units in 2 weeks. GTA V sold over 1 million units 1st week.

PC sales at launch are not always low. This is a myth.

Yes things are changing, I agree. This clusterfuck also suggests that WB took notice because a large number of disgruntled PC customers made themselves heard. Credit also to Steam for offering channels for that discontent: reviews and refunds.

 

[Vuze]

Wow, didn't expect to wake up to this. Let's see what that means for the port. Hope they get it up to snuff.

 

[Auto-Reply]

Let's wait and see before we assume this game comes back in a proper state, "There you go folks, we removed the ini file and hardcoded the settings into the exe so you can't fuck up our game anymore
cheers
WB"

 

[Obliterator]

Yes things are changing, I agree. This clusterfuck also suggests that WB took notice because a large number of disgruntled PC customers made themselves heard. Credit also to Steam for offering channels for that discontent: reviews and refunds.

No doubt. I mean for example, we can extrapolate that the GTAV port has generated already at least 180 million dollars in revenue on PC alone. It has to be over 3 million units sold at nearly full price on all.

I realize these games aren't associated with Batman and not trying to derail the thread, just though it brought context to the situation of why fixing the PC port is a big deal and why WB took a drastic enough step to cancel current sales. The days of PC being "niche" or "small" are far over

 

[neorej]

Agreed. Hindsight is 20/20, but you would think the PC version of all versions to release like this, someone would have said, "you know?! I think we need to delay this version."

That would have cost them far less.

I'm pretty sure someone at iron galaxy is sitting and saying "but it worked perfectly on my machine."

 

[mcwizardry]

Interesting development.

 

[WarpathDC]

I regret buying this from Nuuvem ugh

 

[Forerunner]

Shame it was released in such a horrible state. However, at least they're stepping up and did this. Unlike other companies that release games like MCC, DC, and SimCity and continued to sell them even when they were in a broken state.

 

[avoiderdragon]

I was oh so close to buying it on Steam close to launch. A friend of mine who did buy it ended up having it refunded. Such a disappointing port all around.

This is definitely a move to stem the bleeding.

 

[Vuze]

I regret buying this from Nuuvem ugh

I haven't even viewed my key yet since I bought somewhere else. Contacted the support twice, even before release. Still no reply regarding the batman refund >_<

On another note, interesting thought:
"Warner could do something real crafty now and rebrand Arkham Knight a different edition, flushing over 5,000 negative reviews from Steam."

https://twitter.com/deadendthrills/status/613952086619852800

 

[Mad Season]

When it comes back to steam will the user reviews be wiped or remain?

 

[lupinko]

Iron Galaxy not returning calls for some reason.

BRUTAL COMBO!

 

[TheVampire]

haha

 

[Grief.exe]

I'm pretty sure someone at iron galaxy is sitting and saying "but it worked perfectly on my machine."

I get the impression WB and, to a lesser extent, Rocksteady backed them into a corner.

When it comes back to steam will the user reviews be wiped or remain?

If they keep the same appID, then they will remain.

 

[DSix]

Steam Refund doing god's work. I was resisting it at first but damn if it isn't in fact a fantastic thing.

 

[Alienous]

Isn't this their biggest game of the year?

Holy shit, Batman.

 

[Wiktor]

What were they thinking when they decided to handle the port of their biggest and most important title of he year to some petite 3rd party team? Ehh..

 

[Pops Maellard]

I get the imoression WB and, to a lesser extent, Rocksteady backed them into a corner.

In what way?

 

[Mrbob]

I haven't even viewed my key yet since I bought somewhere else. Contacted the support twice, even before release. Still no reply regarding the batman refund >_<

On another note, interesting thought:
"Warner could do something real crafty now and rebrand Arkham Knight a different edition, flushing over 5,000 negative reviews from Steam."

https://twitter.com/deadendthrills/status/613952086619852800

The negative reviews are the main reason I think this game was pulled. WB doesn't want a mostly negative branding for their top tier franchise. I suspect the new version will be rebranded to purge all those negative reviews.

 

[c0Zm1c]

On another note, interesting thought:
"Warner could do something real crafty now and rebrand Arkham Knight a different edition, flushing over 5,000 negative reviews from Steam."

https://twitter.com/deadendthrills/status/613952086619852800

Similar thing was done with Marvel Heroes but that - Marvel Heroes 2015 - is awesome now.

Any new edition of Arkham Knight would similarly have to be awesome otherwise it will just get a renewed barrage of negative reviews.

 

[VodevilX]

Woah... BATSHIT!

 

[zashga]

Probably would've been easier just to move it to the Early Access section on Steam. Then you don't even have to fix it!

 

[Alienous]

I haven't even viewed my key yet since I bought somewhere else. Contacted the support twice, even before release. Still no reply regarding the batman refund >_<

On another note, interesting thought:
"Warner could do something real crafty now and rebrand Arkham Knight a different edition, flushing over 5,000 negative reviews from Steam."

https://twitter.com/deadendthrills/status/613952086619852800

If it is a new version of the game that doesn't have the same problems then flushing those negative reviews is appropriate.

Hopefully they do more than just give people the game they already paid for at a later date.

 

[Lulubop]

I can't wait for that HBAO+

 

[Sijil]

Refunds and bad press must've shaken them a bit, enough for the big suits to put their foot down, I'd be more comfortable if Rocksteady would take personal charge at fixing this mess and that they would just fire Iron Galaxy, they already fired HVS after the MKX fiasco and hired an actual PC dev for once.

It seems WB have been hiring PC devs by cheapest bidder.

I haven't even viewed my key yet since I bought somewhere else. Contacted the support twice, even before release. Still no reply regarding the batman refund >_<

On another note, interesting thought:
"Warner could do something real crafty now and rebrand Arkham Knight a different edition, flushing over 5,000 negative reviews from Steam."

https://twitter.com/deadendthrills/status/613952086619852800

They can have all the positive praise they want, I would stand on top of the tallest building and sing ballads for them just as long as they fix it.

 

[KingBroly]

The negative reviews are the main reason I think this game was pulled. WB doesn't want a mostly negative branding for their top tier franchise. I suspect the new version will be rebranded to purge all those negative reviews.

I think it was the massive amount of refunds people got. It's a brand new service, so it's fresh in peoples' minds and they know it exists. Being a highly marketed game only magnified that fact. Plus, I imagine they feared for potential lawsuits of what they were promising graphically with the PC version and those things not actually being there.

 

[Skux]

If there was ever a sign to not buy this game until the complete/GotY edition...

 

[Grief.exe]

In what way?

Rumors of limited budget and time given to Iron Galaxy. These may not be substantiated yet, but would be good to hold off on crucifying these guys before we have the whole story.

 

[SlickVic]

I haven't even viewed my key yet since I bought somewhere else. Contacted the support twice, even before release. Still no reply regarding the batman refund >_<

On another note, interesting thought:
"Warner could do something real crafty now and rebrand Arkham Knight a different edition, flushing over 5,000 negative reviews from Steam."

https://twitter.com/deadendthrills/status/613952086619852800

Not sure I see what's wrong with that. If there's a new Steam page for a new version, then that version should be judged based on how well its runs. Hypothetically if they get the run game running very well in a couple of months, what good are reviews for an older version going to do if the game went through a complete overhaul and the complaints of those reviews are no longer relevant to the game at that point?

Similarly if the new version continues to be garbage, then I can't imagine the negative reviews won't come out just as quickly and furiously.

Now I do agree if they try "resetting the reviews" by putting the game back on sale a week or 2 from now with a few minor patches would be bad, but I feel if WB does do something like this, it'll be with a sizable gap in time such that the PC version was significantly reworked (hopefully by Rocksteady) as a proper port.

 

[Ultranist]

 

[Orthogonal]

Well I'm a numbers geek (its part of what I do for a living) so let me hook you up. Big thanks to Steamspy for helping with the tools.

Also let me preface this by saying the tally will not be 100% accurate due to games that come in bundles or have different pricing by country. Some will be a bit higher, some a bit lower than this but should give you a basic idea of what we are looking at in terms of dollars.

So using only the games that qualify in my over 1 full year old, and over 200k units the data brakes down as so. This is for the 2 week Summer Sale period.

Total number of games over 1 year old and over 200k sales: 11

Revenue estimations of the combined 11 titles: $11,700,00 or roughly slightly over 1 million in revenue each on average

Biggest earner: Fallout 3 GOTY and Metro Last Light at 1.5 million each

Lowest earner: Terraria at $560,000

Total Units sold between them: 2.6 million



In conclusion, the people that say "Well PC games all sell for dirt cheap and the devs don't make any money off of them" have no idea what they are talking about and should simply be informed to do their due diligence and research. Also keep in mind that devs and pubs will see much higher profit margins on these titles than they wiill any retail disc sold in a store.

EDIT: Also one more note, I did not use Valve games as they aren't a 3rd party on Steam. I left out all of their sales figures, which would have grown the list by a pretty large margin in both units and revenue.

Yep, Steam Sales still brings in gobs of cash. Just a little perusing of the Steamspy sale chart, if you include other games over a year old that sold less than 200K, there are still some big hitters. (Revenue is estimation, not accurate)

Wolfenstein $1.9M
Dark Souls 2: SOTFS $2.1M (This edition isn't over a year, but the base game is well over a year)
Call of Duty: BLOPS2 $1.2M
Bioshock Infinite $1.3M
Civilization V $1.1M
Borderlands 2 $1M
Skyrim $1M

Crazy, Skyrim is nearly 4 years old and pulling in that kind of cash.

 

[grandwizard]

You are going to see more AAA games not release on PC now or just delay.

The last official numbers for Arkham City say it sold over 6 million units. Steamspy has it as 2.5 million copies sold on Steam. AAA development is too expensive to ignore such a large market, you are basically kneecapping yourself for 1/3'd of your sales potential.

 

[SparkTR]

Witcher 3 sold 1.4 million units in 2 weeks. GTA V sold over 1 million units 1st week.

PC sales at launch are not always low. This is a myth.

For an example of how a newer, popular title can perform in its first summer sale look no farther than Ark: Survival Evolved.

It moved over 400,000 units for over 10 million dollars in revenue.

Also digital sales net publishers 70% of the profit as opposed to 29% that a retail sales results in. Popular digital platforms are valuable things to publishers.

 

[DOG3NZAKA]

I'm sure sale suspension has happened before on Steam, but not for such a high profile game like this. Holy shit. That's bad. They knew damn well the condition the game was in but didn't care. They just assumed nobody should would make a big enough stink about it and it would be something that could easily be swept under the rug. Guess not, lol

This will be remembered and stay in memory for quite a while.

 

[Havel]

Wow, they even removed bokeh DOF. Only just noticed.