No! Vinny can't go play this silly batknight game! First he needs to put at least 150 hours into the witcher 3. That game feels like the perfect Vinny game.

At least I got to try out the refund feature on steam. And it works a charm. Though it takes a few days to a week to get the money back, it was approved within a few hours. Good on you, Valve. And holy shit, I never though WB would pull it.

Just curious, but did they ever promise uncapped or higher framerate? Most of the complaints seem to be centered around how it being inexplicably locked at 30 is totally unacceptable, but I don't really see why that's an issue beyond the entitlement of people who have spent thousands of pounds on a monster PC.

Like, if they promised 60 and delivered 30, sure, that's annoying. But if it was never mentioned and the argument is that it 'just shouldn't' be at 30 then that's kind of stupid.

This boasts 60 frames per second. It's been speculated - based on the fucked up audio at times - that this official video was simply sped up to 60fps in a case of blatant false advertising. Some of the promised graphics features, like the rain drops visible on Batman's armor, are also missing from the PC version but are curiously present on the PS4.

When all it takes to change the frame rate is editing a .ini file its not a big deal logistically. But its just one more thing that showcases the lack of effort and half-baked nature of the port.

Honestly, unlocked framerate or atleast 60 is a standard on the PC. It's more like they would have had to tell people if it didn't have it. But yeah, there was that Nvidia video.

Good thing Austin's here to shine some light on the PC racism these days with the new AAA games. Honestly I haven't had a console since Famicom and I really didn't need one. I stop buying triple AAA games since Diablo 3 disappointed me (because I'm too scared to buy one of the new ones and with good reason, sure I can pirate the game but I am 30 years old with a child and don't have the time for that) and I feel really happy with my decision, but this is ridiculous.

I ask one thing, when we they stop making shitty PC ports?

@john1912: I'm trying to grit my teeth and play through it too, but I'm getting constant stuttering and freezing now along with original frame rate issues. When I get into the batmobile, my frame rate drops to 1 FPS every 10 seconds causing me to crash into walls. It's getting much harder to play now which is a shame. It has good gameplay.

@ghostiet: Thanks but yeah that strikes me more as an NVIDIA promotional thing than an actual WB or Rocksteady backed piece of press saying 'this will run at 60 and we guarantee it.' You're right that it also seems more like a video captured and messed around with to hit youtube's 60fps requirements than anything else, the audio is a little messed up.

Sure all it takes for the consumer to change the framerate is to mess around with registry files (which isn't... really a good idea anyway) but I have to assume that there were technical reason for the locked framerate. People complaining about performance issues after going in and changing .ini files are doing the equivalent of buying a car, immediately removing the spark plugs and complaining that it won't start and it seems a little juvenile to me. Sure there are people having legit problems with it not starting or crashing and so on, and those are problems that should have been caught and need addressed. But the majority of people complaining seem to think a port job is as simple as opening Unreal and going to File > Export > Make PC version and it all just seems kind of silly.

Frame rate issue are really inconsistent from what I have experienced and can happen at any time from a cut scene, getting into bat mobile and opening doors seem to be most common causes. I get around 60 to 50 on so called high settings and the frame rate drops can be anywhere from 20 to 15 frames and even to 5 fps at one point.

Other problems include weird sound bugs and the port is missing features from console version rain collecting on bat suit and forming puddles on road.

And also the lack of common graphics settings for example ambient occlusion, Lack of settings baffles me and it reminds me of the dark souls pc port.

Sad times because the game is actually good when your not having problems

Edit:also SLI is completely broken and makes the problems worse.

I disagree, because there are people that say they drop to 1fps and freeze while in the batmobile, and get constant game crashing.

That is completely different than someone's conceived notion of what okay is. Those are objective issues with the game that people like me just are not experiencing. So many of the complaints are about sub 10 fps drops, and game crashes, which I get none of.

@the-nanomachines:The technical reason was that it was a shoddy port and the developers half arsed the game on PC. I don't see any developers who take PC seriously as a market and a platform to develop on locking the frame rate for consumers because they think it's in their best interest.

The whole point of PC is that it's an open platform, If I want the frame rate to be locked, I will lock it myself using MSI afterburner or RIVATUNER. The real reason it was locked to 30 was that it couldn't realistically perform at 60fps or above smoothly on most rigs and they wanted to cover it up. There are exceptions as some people can play but they are the minority here.

Maybe but the difficulty argument breaks down in the wider context. Of course game development is hard but the majority of pc ports are fine. If the Majority can do it and do it without significant issue I just dont buy the 'but its hard!' line.

Early adopters get screwed on so many levels, games are broken, prices too high, day 1 DLC and pre-order nonsense, proper DLC which never goes on sale (even when the GOTY is super cheap). Given the ridiculous backlog everyone has and the inevitable GOTY edition its becoming impossible to justify buying games early.

GFB takes on a whole new meaning.

Well, he was partly responsable for letting the MCC ship the way it did, where as he afaik doesn't have anything to do with batman, so I don't really understand what your point is.

I'm assuming that if i decide to keep my copy, that wasn't bought through steam, they will be rolling out patches and fixes to fix this shit in due time.

@the-nanomachines: Sure, it's a Nvidia video, but let's face it - it's not like WB didn't know about this shit and the video card manufacturer pulled a fast one on them. The sudden, day-before sys req change is also pretty shady. WB had to know what's up and they should have made steps to prevent it, but they didn't. And even beyond framerate locking, the game has massive issues with fps consistency and stability on many machines.

And I dunno, I don't really buy the "port difficulty" argument here. If a bunch of Japanese developers who 1. come from a country which has little regard for PC gaming, 2. work on a brand new engine with capabilities fine tuned towards a single game and technologies that aren't present or work completely differently in other engines and 3. have been in constant conflict with their publisher in the past 2-3 years can create a PC port of a console game which manages to run in 60fps on high settings on a hot-dog toaster (hi, KojiPro and MGSV), so can a bunch of Americans who work on an engine built for multiplatform releases and which is famously user friendly, to the point where there is a detailed walkthrough on importing and translating Unity projects into the UE4 environment. They just need to 1. assign a proper porting team, 2. give them enough time and most importantly 3. give a fuck and have a modicum of respect towards the consumer. WB has been showing that they are actively attempting to push the limit of consumer patience since Arkham City and they've finally reached it. Only the problem is, their asshattery is now affecting the reputation of a major hardware company, one of their flagship studios and an up-and-coming publishing/outsourcing studio. This shit needs to stop.

@twinsun: the onus is on the developer to create a working product as much as it is on the certification process to let it be sold - neither having directly anything to do with Phil Spencer. Also I was being facetious, it's not a big deal.

Anyone "not having problems" are in fact still having problems. The missing graphical elements problem is universal across the board. I can run the game ok, certainly no where near as well as it should run on the hardware I'm using, however ambient occlusion, surface water and Bokeh DoF are all still missing and I sure as hell can't wish those back into existence. Also the texture streaming is straight up jacked.

The concept of promising a frame rate on a PC title is crazy. The only promise that should be made in that department is that the developer won't do a half assed job and leave in a low frame rate lock as a result of the porting process. We never had to worry about this crap until roughly the middle of the PS2 era.

@the-nanomachines: if you don't know anything about how PC games work you should probably just nod and move on. Changing a frame cap in an .ini file is not equivalent in any way to altering the way a car works, nor is it out of the ordinary. That sort of thing is actually pretty common, both for frame caps and those who run non-standard resolutions.

Also, yes, when people spend the money on a PC so they can get the best experience possible, they absolutely should expect that. There's no excuse for a PC version having less features than a console version with far inferior hardware. Calling that "entitlement" is childish.

This is how the Batman dies. Lang was the Arkham/Chi-Town Knight all along.

60fps has been standard for PC for decades. Since when is it suddenly a bonus extra? Also people report single digits or straight up freezes at certain points.

Refunded it before they even said to refund it. Shame too. I was quite excited for the game and bought a copy for PC so I can play on my laptop on the go and a PS4 copy just because. But that was apparently a pipe dream. On my desktop, which has a 980, it ran terribly and looked like shit.

It's 2015. A game on PC that cannot be run at 60FPS is unacceptable. Broken ports are unacceptable, especially since they hyped up the new consoles as basically having similar architecture to a PC. This, ladies and gents, is why we don't pre-order. Ever. Lesson learned. Again. Thanks Warner.

EDIT:

Also want to add a few things to the unacceptable brigade.

Not having AA is unacceptable. Not being able to disable Motion Blur is unacceptable. Not being able to disable mouse smoothing is unacceptable. Not being able to adjust mouse sensitivity is worse than not acceptable, it's fucking downright moronic.

This game runs on Unreal 3. Unreal 3 is a decade old. A decade. People should have a handle on this.

I don't know who should get the blame here. Iron Galaxy for a shitty port, much like Arkham Origins. WB for rushing it out and apparently giving Iron Galaxy 8 weeks to do it, around E3 no less. Or Rocksteady for just pawning it off. Fuck videogames.

It's incorrect to say that 60 frames is standard. An uncapped frame rate which is then synced to whatever your display can handle (or not if you prefer tearing to buffer latency) is the standard. People were playing quake with vsync locked to 85fps back in the day because 85hz CRT's were common.

@humanity: Well, 343 is directly owned by microsoft, and phil spencer runs the xbox division, so I do think it has something directly to do with him. But yes, it isn't a big deal, I just didn't quite get the comparison.

Just for factual accuracy, that is misinformation. You'll notice the Steam page says:

Batman: Arkham Knight will be available on SteamOS, Linux and Mac in Fall 2015.

which was always the target release for those three non-Windows versions of the game.

What's the excuse the outsourced PC port studio has for this?

What's the excuse High Voltage had for Mortal Kombat X PC?

Or the circus clowns who felt Halo:MCC was ready to drop?

Are these ports the result of 168 hour crunch-weeks or are we talking incompetency and a deathly lack of overseeing of the projects that could and often should (espec with the suits)lead to people having to find new jobs because they screwed up so bad it hurt business and stock prices?

I don't follow stocks, but apparently WB only gave the PC version to Iron Galaxy 8 weeks ago. Add in the fact that half the industry buggers off to get boozed and schmoozed the week before and during E3.

I blame WB for this. Iron Galaxy ported BioShock Infinite just fine, WB didn't give them enough time. They should've just delayed the PC release from the get go, or delayed them all if a simultaneous release is important. I think WB's meddling is also part of Mortal Kombat X's issues - that streaming content thing was a joke.

@yakov456 said:

Ha! Points to you, sir.

It's definitely on Warner Brothers. Whatever contract or agreement Rocksteady had with them, Warner Brothers was clearly in charge of seeing the PC port come to market. The fact that they went with the lowest bidder, who already did a shoddy port of Batman: Arkham Origins, came back to deservedly bite them in the ass.

I love Lang, and Iron Galaxy has proven they can do good port work, but 8 weeks is a Hail Mary for any studio.

I got this at a discount, so I think I'll probably just wait it out. That is, assuming it gets properly fixed.

Of course you blame Warner Brothers. They own the IP and decide what happens. If they decide to give it to a studio that can't do it, that's on them. You're no longer excused for giving something out of hands and saying you didn't do the work. You decided who did the work, so it's still on you as a company.

I felt sympathetic the first time I heard of an outsourced game port turning up trash, but we know that happens now. Publishers should pick their developers more carefully then. In addition, if it's true that Iron Galaxy only had 8 weeks for this, that seems a rather short amount of time.

It is 100% WB fault. And they owned up to it it seems like.

Got my Steam refund in 10 minutes. That feature works way better than I ever hoped it would. Came just in time too.

I would argue that Iron Galaxy is not blameless. Yes 8 weeks is short, but clearly Iron Galaxy accepted those terms. So either they believed they could pull it off or knew it wouldn't be a good port from the start. Either way they cannot escape some of the blame.

I couldn't get a refund since I was gifted the game and I redeemed it before knowing of the technical issues but I'm glad they are doing this. This means that actually want to fix it. My backlog is gigantic and I can wait but they should really ship games when they are ready. This is getting out of hand.

The difference is that in the months before that there was no refund policy on Steam.

Still, we don't know what the terms were. Was the deal signed at the beginning of Arkham Knight's development? When was the code supposed to given to Iron Galaxy? How many resources were given to Iron Galaxy? There are a lot of variables and speculating is useless, not to mention dangerous.

The only thing we know for certain is that Warner Bros decided to put this out, instead of delaying it.

I really hope GreenMan Gaming offers refunds as well, I'm just gonna stick with thePS4 version.

I suppose kudos for them to stop selling their product until they can repair the current issues. It's a step towards 'Don't ship/sell games that aren't fully ready.'

This is possibly the game that will compel WB Interactive to depart the PC platform forever.

Yeah, people whom purchased the game on Steam were raging. Even people with the most powerful Nvidia card (980GTX) and i7 processor were getting unplayable frame rates, when the 30 FPS cap was removed in settings.

These horrible PC ports are starting to happen too often, to the point that people might not have a choice but to get a console. I, myself, will be getting a PS4 because of the exclusive games, anyway. I don't know why these developers ship their games off to lesser developers to make PC ports, instead of doing the work themselves. The Xbox One and the PS4 use the same x86 CPU instructions as the PC, so there is no excuse.

No way to know for sure, but it seems like the distinguishing factor between this and MKX is that Steam refunds had arrived. Nothing will convince you to pull a title like thousands of purchases charged back. I would expect this to be the norm for broken PC ports given the ease of refunds now. You're better off pulling the game and having a fanfare "re-launch" to try to bring people back in than leaving it out there for people to return. Whereas before the sales had already been made, so fix it but who cares otherwise.

Now whether the pressure in returns leads to developers not releasing broken titles on Steam is a whole other question. You'd think so, but I imagine most bad PC ports will still roll the dice the major problems don't catch on and fail to do the endless testing of video cards and hardware configurations PC requires.

While it's true we don't know the details, the variables you mentioned are all things generally agreed to upfront and signed by both parties. So in case of a breach by WB a proper contract should've given Iron Galaxy the chance to abort. So either they didn't have the proper papers in place or regardless of everything still believed they good do a proper job.

Don't buy new games.

<tinfoil hat> Steam knew this high-profile PC release was a disaster, which is why they so recently made their refund policy clear and consistent </tinfoil hat>

Warner having a rough year launching games on PC.

First MKX and now this.