Batman: Arkham Knight PC Port Suffers an Abysmal Launch

Most every gamer who hasn't been looking forward to the expansion of Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward has instead looked forward to another highly anticipated title: Batman Arkham Knight. Though it seems that the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the title celebrated a smooth release, the PC version hasn't been as lucky.

In fact, it has been so unlucky that Batman must have seen Catwoman cross his path as he glided to the PC port. Unfortunately, PC's Arkham Knight has been marred by so many performance issues that the game has received a rating of 5/10 on Steam. Even worse, two-thirds of the community have provided nothing but negative feedback, mostly on performance issues:
 

"*sigh* where to start. It's 2015 and a game of this caliber is being locked at 30fps? While the option is editable. You have to go into the config to do it instead of the main menu. But that doesn't matter. The game is terribly optimized. whether it's 30 or 60fps. You'll get major framerate drops. A single GTX 970 isn't even enough to keep it at a stable 30fps. Which is complete ludicrous. Warner Brothers should be ashamed of releasing a game like this.

What makes it worst is that that at the very last hour they edited the Steam sub for the people that got the free Nvidia copy for buying a GTX 970 or 980. So that you wouldn't get the Harley Quinn pre-order bonus. Why do that? You already give away a free game, why take away a little pre-order bonus that everyone else who pre-order would get?

You just ended up making a lot of people angry. For months now people have been asking whether or not the people who got the Nvidia free copy would be getting the Harley Quinn pack. You were completely unclear on it, beating around the bushes.

This is no way to treat your fans.

At this point this game isn't worth buying because of technical issues and such a terrible practice by it's publisher. Even people who got this game for free must feel like they got betrayed right now."

And then we have this:

"I can't recommend the game in its current condition. Who cares about the 30FPS cap because that's an easy fix in the .ini files. The stuttering and freezing, however, happens even on the lowest settings, and it is unfixable. I've never played a game with stuttering this bad before, and I've played games with a dying GPU.

I'm giving this game the two weeks before I refund it, which I probably can't due to it being from a third-party. My review will change when the game is playable.

EDIT: Holy crap, I did a validation and got this message: '4647 files failed to validate and will be reacquired.' What the hell, Rocksteady? I've never seen ANY preload game do more than 2~3 files, not nearly 5000!"

Here's one that can force a chuckle out of you:

"Also known as Assassin's Creed Unity 2 Enhanced Stuttering Edition."

And another:

"Scarecrow unleashed the fear toxin on the PC community. Now, some of their worst fears are manifesting in the new Batman game.
- Can Batman offer us any optimization patches?!
- Is there any hope left for us?
POWER UP THE BAT SIGNAL!"

And this sums up my feelings:

"I got it for free, and I still want a refund."

Yes, people aren't exactly thrilled. However, the issue has been addressed by Rocksteady. They issued a statement, reporting that they are working to resolve the issues, though another studio worked on the PC Port:
 

"We're aware that some users are reporting performance issues with the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight. This is something that Rocksteady takes very seriously. We are working closely with our PC development partner to make sure these issues get resolved as quickly as possible. We'll update this thread when we've got more info."

Of course, this is not the first instance of a hellish release. In fact, we have seen this far too often last year with Driveclub, The Crew, Assassin's Creed: Unity, and more. It seems that Rocksteady has not learned the lesson of 2014, especially by not working closer with the crew that created the PC port.

A broken release can and will be very costly for any company, that much I can assure anyone.
 
Check out Gamerz Unite in the near future for our review on the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight.