Issues of PC's Batman: Arkham Knight have been Known for "Months"

Sometimes, bugs and issues are unexpected, causing publishers/developers to panic and thus pull a drastic measure, such as postponing a release.

Looking at you, Driveclub.

Then there are games with known bugs and issues that publishers turn a blind eye to in hopes that players would forgive or overlook these issues on release date.
Batman: Arkham Knight falls under the latter, as Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment apparently has been fully aware of the issues, including framerate, resolution, and various bugs, that disrupted the enjoyment of many fans since the day of release.

In an interview with Kotaku, sources -- who remained anonymous and seemed to know of Arkham Knight's development -- stated that WB knew of all of the bugs, glitches, framerate, and resolution issues months before release. One QA tester even goes on to state:
 

"I will say that it's pretty rich for WB to act like they had no idea the game was in such a horrible state. It's been like this for months and all the problems we see now were the exact same, unchanged, almost a year ago."

To further enlighten the situation, sources continue to state that WB shipped the PC version of Arkham Knight, outsourced to Iron Galaxy Studios, because the publisher thought it was perfectly fine to ship. Additionally, what apparently affected the PC version were the difficulties of next-gen console development. The source claimed that the console versions of Arkham Knight refused to run for months -- hence the often delay.

Another source went on to state that towards the end of production, QA teams were told to focus on finding console bugs rather than PC bugs, because of the difficulties Rocksteady encountered with consoles. As a result, only 10% of roughly 100 testers focused on the PC version. On console, testers reported over 100 bugs per day, and developers attempted to fix what they could while finishing the game itself, slowing down development. A different source added another important bit of information: the internal QA team focused on bug-testing at 720p only, which would explain why, at higher resolutions, the performance dropped immensely on PC. 

Of course, all this information has not been verified but still seems both believable and disappointing. Publishers tend to push hard for developers to finish a game on time, sometimes even ignoring issues that could possibly plague games.

On a personal note, publishers should truly listen to the developers -- there's a phrase that coincides with common sense of the business world: "Quality is the best business plan."

In this case, if you release a high quality game, you will be rewarded handsomely. If you release a poor quality game, expect refunds, bad reviews, poor sales, and -- most importantly -- the loss of consumer loyalty, which results in loss of profits.

As of late, gamers appear to be more patient than in years past. A few years ago, not so much, but after the backlash of many game releases due to time constraints (i.e. Final Fantasy XIV, Watchdogs, Assassin's Creed Unity, Driveclub, The Master Chief Collection, etc.), quite a few gamers have grown to accept an extended deadline, as long as the quality of the game will be improved and enjoyable for fans. Of course, this is may not be 100% true, as I am simply going by comments on articles relating to delays of various games. 

Recently, Batman: Arkham Knight has been torn down from Steam and other digital distributors, and it will take some time to re-release the title, so here is hoping to a better release, right?

Unfortunately, due to the happenstance, GZU will review the PC version of Arkham Knight at a later date.