
Warner Bros Suspends Sales of Batman: Arkham Knight PC Version - minimaxir
https://community.wbgames.com/t5/Support-for-PC/June-24-Update-on-PC-Version-of-Arkham-Knight/m-p/575332#U575332
======
minimaxir
The suspension is likely happening due to many, many technical issues with the
port: [http://kotaku.com/batman-arkham-knights-pc-version-is-a-
mess...](http://kotaku.com/batman-arkham-knights-pc-version-is-a-
mess-1713351974)

The average rating for the game on Steam was 31%. Since this was the first AAA
game to be released on Steam after the release of Steam Refunds, it's also
suspected that a high number of returns could force drastic action.

~~~
bane
Steam could be a major force in turning around the recent slew of absolutely
craptastic, completely broken, game releases recently.

QA/QC should not happen at the customer level.

~~~
SilasX
"We don't need unit tests because we have integration tests. We don't need
integration tests because we have QA acceptance tests. We don't need QA
acceptance tests because end users will report any bugs to us. We don't listen
to user feedback because declining sales will tip us off to the problems. We
don't pay attention to sales numbers because creditors seizing our assets will
alert us of the shortcoming."

~~~
yoklov
I know you're joking, but it's pretty much infeasible to test the kind of bugs
typical in games using automatic testing. So much is content driven, and the
state space is far too large.

Even for stuff that's fairly testable, like navigation, collision, etc, you
have the issue of there being a million edge/degenerate cases, and it's very
hard to know this never hits one in the game code or content.

So the best you can usually do is test library code.

Not that this has anything to do with AK, which sounds like plain old
sloppiness.

~~~
serge2k
Ok, but in this case they chose to put in a 30FPS cap. Ignoring that
performance is well below even that, they should have known it was
unacceptable.

~~~
maccard
Why is that unacceptable? From the reports I've read re enabling the 30fps cap
removes many of the performance problems. Some of the game logic can be hard
coded to accept 33ms frame times, especially if the console versions are
capped at 30 and the PC version is a port of them. They made a technical
decision to cap it at 30, there's nothing wrong with that. If you don't agree
with it, then don't buy it.

~~~
lsadam0
I'm a developer, but not a game developer. Making the decision to hardcode
game logic to only accept 33ms frame time sounds like a pretty dumb choice. I
would wager that if your fix is to artificially cap performance of your
software, then something in your code base sucks majorly. Call me crazy.

~~~
forgottenpass
_I 'm a developer, but not a game developer. Making the decision to hardcode
game logic to only accept 33ms frame time sounds like a pretty dumb choice._

I'm not a game developer, but I am a realtime system developer. We could hem
and haw about all the different hypothetical ways all the implementation
details can suck, but locking and/or hardcoding for certain framerates is a
perfectly fine decision. Doubly fine when those frames aren't graphical.

Easy but contrived example: If I hard code a purpose-specific audio pathway to
only operate at 44100hz, that can be a perfectly acceptable design decision
given the purpose. How deeply the code assumes that rate can be indicative of
code quality, but if the assumption is hard to excise from the code in
performance-critical areas, well that happens.

Here is the part where I have to qualify I'm not saying more than I've said.
I'm not defending the use of 30fps cap here, or saying that this game's code
is any good overall. The gaming customer has higher realtime expectations than
30fps, especially on PC. And although I haven't played this game, the market
is showing it is a bad product beyond that.

 _I would wager that if your fix is to artificially cap performance of your
software, then something in your code base sucks majorly. Call me crazy._

In a realtime system, consistent performance is a more important goal that
maximum performance. For games that want high-end graphics, the goals are to
have maximum performance on data of highly variable complexity, push the
limits of what can be done, but rarely (if ever) whiff on the real time
deadline. I won't disagree that most game codebases have pockets of major suck
or that a locked rate can be a bandaid for sucking, but it is not indicative
of such.

~~~
lsadam0
Very interesting, you are correct. Thanks for this reply. My experience has
always been in the world of 'performance is king', it's easy for me to lose
sight of the idea that systems do exist in which such a limit is beneficial.

------
thejosh
And issues like these are why you should never preorder PC games. They have an
unlimited amount of copies, so it's not like you will be waiting weeks for
something. Is a tiny preorder bonus really worth the risk of gambling your
money?

Now Steam has introduced refunds, you can refund a game if you haven't played
more than 2 hours, and a few weeks haven't passed.

~~~
eru
If it's a small company, you might want to give them money up front to help
them keep afloat. Steam has early-acces games for that reason.

(It's better than pre-order, since you get to play the unfinished game
earlier, if you want to. If you choose early-access but wait for the official
release before you run it, it's exactly the same as pre-order.)

~~~
adamrezich
Right, but you should only give them money if the product that they have on
Early Access is already fun, right?

Take Rust (the game, not the language) for instance. They cobbled together
what is now known as "Rust Legacy" as a sort of demo of what they wanted the
game to be. Thousands of people bought it. Now Facepunch is using the funds
from all those sales to completely rework the game from the ground-up. Now
it's better than Rust Legacy, and only going to get better and more
interesting.

But if Rust Legacy wasn't fun, nobody would've bought it. TL;DR: don't
preorder (including early access!) games purely on promise alone.

~~~
lmm
What if what they have so far isn't fun, but you think it might become very
fun if they were given enough money to finish it? Isn't that (sometimes) worth
taking the risk on?

~~~
ascagnel_
To steal an idea from Bungie, when it comes to games you want "thirty seconds
of fun" \-- a base gameplay loop (in the case of Halo, where it originally
applied, it's the loop of taking out baddies from a distance, then the
stronger baddies from mid-range, then mopping up the scattered weak baddies).
An early demo (like the aforementioned Rust Legacy) is a proof-of-concept of
that base gameplay loop, and if players like it, they can fund it.

Once it's funded, they can build out from that base loop, and eventually
you'll get a finished product.

~~~
eru
Interesting concept! I wonder how it would apply to other genres, eg old
school point-n-click adventures?

------
BinaryIdiot
I'm not surprised they suspended it but I wonder why they even released it. A
vast majority of games that are released for consoles end up having a delayed
PC version so why didn't they just delay it even for a short time?

For what it's worth the game is really fun to play on a console.

Slightly off topic: am I the only one who had to open developer tools to hide
the huge spoiler modal because no key combination / refresh / mouse clicking
would get rid of it? That was frustrating.

~~~
yaeger
I bet it was an executive decision. The game was already delayed. Twice. They
probably decided to push out what they had for PC just so they wouldn't have
to announce another delay. For the PC version only, of course. While
simultaneously releasing the console versions.

My guess is, they thought even though it is buggy, they can fix it with
patches and will only get minor flack for this from the PC users. And that
this would be the better choice than to anger every PC gamer by announcing the
third delay.

Well, now it is clear that this was the wrong decision. They both,
underestimated just how broken the game was and how incomplete compared to the
console version and they forgot about Valve's newly introduced refund system.

WBGames can claim that they suspended this game for PC but if I were to
venture a guess, I'd say it was Valve that suspended this game because they
were tired of processing so many refunds. They would have said "A game that
gets this many negative reviews and all are claiming horrible performance and
missing effects must clearly be broken and therefore we shouldn't continue to
sell it as it will only lead to even more refund claims."

A couple of interesting things to note: 1\. They removed the PC logo from all
Arkham Knight pages. 2\. The company itself tells people about how to request
refunds 3\. The company also asks for patience while this is being worked out

The last two are somewhat contradictory to me. When a company tells customers
on their own free will how to get refunds sounds like an admittance to failure
and that they do not believe this can be fixed in a timely manner. And then
they still ask for patience which sounds like they are working on a solution.
Paired with them removing all PC logos from their promo pages for this game
really seems weird.

While this announcement was leagues better than the marketing speak of the
first announcement they did, I think customers still need more, clearer
information what is going to happen. People who deal in software already know
this but the average customer has no idea how long such things can take.
Therefore they should explicitly announce what they are going to do. To me, it
doesn't sound like patches will do the trick. From all accounts, this pc
version sounds broken by design and the root causes are stuck deeeeeep in
there. So, if they plan to fix this, then they should announce that an entire
rewrite is needed and that this takes time. While at it, they should also tell
us _who_ will do this rewrite. I am sure no one wants Iron Galaxy at this
again. We want Rocksteady to do it. Because we know they actually can make a
Batman game. As evidenced by the ps4 version of this one and the first two
games in general. Both ran fine on pc. I already heard speculation that they
might try and release this in the fall when they scheduled the SteamOS and Mac
version of the game. One can only hope for the sake of the windows version
that Rocksteady will not be busy writing these versions and continue to
outsource the windows version to the same cracksquad that arsed up this time.

~~~
wjoe
The Mac and Linux/SteamOS versions are being outsourced to Feral. They've done
a good job with XCOM on Mac/Linux and the previous Batman games on Mac so I
have confidence in them doing a decent job there. It'd be interesting if their
OpenGL implementation actually ends up being better than the Windows DirectX
version, but I suspect the issues are at a higher level.

------
archagon
With my low-end computer (previously mid-range), I've found that even with
driver updates and patches, launch performance in games never improves by more
than a few FPS. Now, to my knowledge, the problem with Knight is that it runs
poorly and is capped to 30. If the pattern continues and Rocksteady can't
reliably get it up to 60 (a 2x gain!!), then what happens? The game remains
suspended forever?

(In other news, I was really hoping to maybe eke by playing Knight at
low/30fps on my Macbook w/discrete Nvidia graphics, but I guess that's not
going to happen.)

~~~
rjbwork
Here's the thing: you're not the person who's raging out over this. Yes,
you're part of the demographic who might be upset, but it's people like me,
who have stuff like 2x(or more) 980/295x (or better), 3000+MHz DDR4, x99
Processors/Motherboards, all overclocked, with custom cooling solutions and
hooked up to G-Sync/FreeSync displays, that are upset. While graphics are not
everything, and I play plenty of non-AAA games, a good chunk of the rationale
behind even _buying_ AAA games is beautiful graphics and high framerates. With
the shit drivers from NVidia, and the absolute tripe so many studios are
pumping out these days, I'm questioning the ongoing viability of high-level
desktop gaming solutions.

Then, to have the absolute audacity to call a game AAA when it's hard capped
at 30fps on PC is just an absolute act of spitting in our faces.

~~~
pjc50
Interesting that you're spending orders of magnitude more on the hardware than
on the games.

~~~
ionised
Why is that interesting?

~~~
pjc50
Because the effect achieved is a function of game+hardware. For a total budget
of X dollars to achieve the best possible result, the hardware is a much
larger component of the budget. Would people spending thousands on hardware
also be willing to spend more and wait longer in order to get higher-quality
video in games? Is that what the PC version is "supposed" to be about,
compared to the standardised console product?

Audio climbed this curve and has topped out. Video games haven't really
explored it.

(evidently it's uninteresting enough that someone's downvoted it ..)

~~~
ionised
I didn't downvote, but the whole point of the PC as a game platform is to get
the best possible experience. That usually comes with a higher price tag that
many are willing to pay.

Very high-end systems are more niche obviously and the price onvolved their
shouldn't be indicative of anything other than enthusiasm by hobbysists.
Enthusiasts in any field or hobby are usually willing to spend lots of money
to get a 'superior' experience.

As for waiting for higher quality I think yes, many would be willing to wait.
GTA V came out nearly two years after the console releases and I was one of
those who waited for it.

It's not like I was aching with anticipation for it, I had more than enough
games in my backlog to play and when it did eventually release it was much
better than the console versions.

It's not like GTA V is indicative of multiplatform releases though. Most will
release on PC at the exact same time and not suffer the kind of issues we have
seen with Arkham Knight.

Arkham Knight's absymal PC release was due only to a shitty port by a small
third party studio that was obviously incapable or unequipped to handle it. I
don't think I'd even really blame Iron Galaxy for this either, I blame Warner
Bros and possibly even Rocksteady for thinking outsourcing the port was a good
idea.

------
rkangel
There's a nice side benefit here for the fact that I'm always at least 6
months behind games.

I don't have enough time to play games as much as I'd like (i.e. as much as I
did as a teenager), so I only play a few selected highlights, and given that,
it makes no difference to me if I'm playing the cutting edge or what came out
6 months ago - it normally takes me 6 months to finish something.

This has lots of benefits: You get the community consensus on what is worth
playing, not the marketing hype. The game is usually cheaper. The major bugs
have been filtered out.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Totally agreed. Why pre-order to get the exclusive content when you can have
it 6 months down the line in the "Game Of The Year Edition" \- and usually
much cheaper _and_ with all of the bugs ironed out. What's not to like? :)

------
pervycreeper
Steam refunds, in conjunction with the recent political mobilization of
gamers, will change the gaming landscape for the better, allowing developers
and consumers to stand in a relationship that begins to approach good faith.
This seems to be the first AAA reaction to the new situation, but we have
already witnessed the complaints of Steam crapware/shovelware producers, as
well as the exit from games of some bad actors (such as Tale of Tales).

------
ShardPhoenix
That forum must be really heavily moderated/censored. Based on eg the
Battle.net forums I'd have expected to see much angrier posts.

~~~
minimaxir
The corresponding announcement on Steam has what you're looking for:
[http://steamcommunity.com/games/208650/announcements/detail/...](http://steamcommunity.com/games/208650/announcements/detail/145587678167685991)

------
alexholehouse
Technical question - I've seen reports that, "...people who have installed the
game to SSD's are apparently getting better performance" [1].

Which implies, to me (both intuitively and having worked on a lot of high
performance I/O limited use cases) that part of the issue is read/write speed
from the disk? But if that's the case, what kind of software architecture
makes sense for a game to have (apparently) real time data processing pulling
resources from the disk?

Obviously you need to load maps/games/cutscene etc etc, but this makes it
sound like there is constant polling every n-th frame?

[1] - [http://www.pcgamer.com/batman-arkham-knights-launch-
appears-...](http://www.pcgamer.com/batman-arkham-knights-launch-appears-to-
be-a-disaster/)

------
Vaturius
I think this is an honest and fair decision towards the consumer base. Perhaps
they can offer one of the two previous Batman games to make up for the time
lost before the update arrives. Let's hope the patch resolves the issues.

------
beedogs
They must've just run this one through a shell script to port it. Seems like
they put the least amount of effort they could into the PC version.

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thescribe
It seems there are quiet a few issues with this port. I wonder if this is a
result of rushing QA?

~~~
kevingadd
Stuff this dramatic would have been noticed by QA, and almost certainly known
to the programmers. The publisher decided to ship it in this state.

~~~
minimaxir
It should be noted that Warner Bros also recently published MKX on PC, which
had similar issues. [http://www.gamespot.com/articles/mortal-kombat-x-pc-
patch-pu...](http://www.gamespot.com/articles/mortal-kombat-x-pc-patch-pulled-
after-erasing-save/1100-6427111/)

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recursive
Does anyone know whether the Xbox version is ok?

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anti-shill
was there a confederate flag on it?!

