Old Arkham Knight Reviews Flagged as "Pre-Release"

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What do you guys think of this? We all know the game was pulled from store shelves after being officially released months ago, so it seems like a bit of revisionist history on the part of Warner Bros. to go back and flag reviews as "pre-release" instead of "pre-patch."

User reviews for Batman: Arkham Knight on Steam from before today's re-release of the action/adventure are now flagged as "pre-release" reviews, in spite of being submitted for the officially released version of the game, which was quickly pulled from sale. Arkham Knight also now lists today as its release date, but it does not seem these older reviews have been removed from the game's aggregate score, as it currently reads: "User reviews: Mixed (17,741 reviews)."
 
if they pulled the game and are doing a re-release - I wouldn't want to wade through reviews from when the game was broken to make an informed buying decision..

IMO this is the right move..

I'm actually a little surprised at the flack WB is doing in trying to make this one right.. its something the PC community has wanted for a while and finally a published has stepped up and is doing the right thing instead of just trying to "Cash" out on the PC community with a shody port

I say Good Job WB and in that I'd even go so far as to say wipe out the reviews and start over :)
 
Any other publisher would've just called the game finished and abandoned it. Glad WB manned up and actually decided to hault sales to fix their mess. Makes them better than 90% of big name publishers in my book.
 
NickJames said:
Any other publisher would've just called the game finished and abandoned it. Glad WB manned up and actually decided to hault sales to fix their mess. Makes them better than 90% of big name publishers in my book.
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Its too bad they didnt do the same for Arkham origins. I only got hit by a few of the glitches but damn they were annoying.
 
Except it wasn't a pre-release, it was a full release and top brass at WB said "FXXX IT! DO IT LIVE!" and sent it out as is.

Only after reviews were overwhelmingly negative and nobody was buying the game did they do a 180 and fix it.

Still too little too late in my book.
 
ShamisOMally said:
Except it wasn't a pre-release, it was a full release and top brass at WB said "FXXX IT! DO IT LIVE!" and sent it out as is.

Only after reviews were overwhelmingly negative and nobody was buying the game did they do a 180 and fix it.

Still too little too late in my book.
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What more can you want? A refund? Developers gotta eat too.
 
I think the only reason WB fixed the game in the first place was due to the newly implemented (at the time) Steam Refund program. Once they saw the volume of refunds, they realized they needed to take action.

This whole situation was a disaster. The only thing good that could possibly happen would be if the big developers learned a bit about QA prior to release on the PC.
 
Bandalo said:
I think the only reason WB fixed the game in the first place was due to the newly implemented (at the time) Steam Refund program. Once they saw the volume of refunds, they realized they needed to take action.

This whole situation was a disaster. The only thing good that could possibly happen would be if the big developers learned a bit about QA prior to release on the PC.
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That's true too, I keep forgetting about the new steam refunds. It most definitely aided in them fixing it. A good portion I would assume came from Nvidia keys though and those were non-refundable.
 
Bandalo said:
I think the only reason WB fixed the game in the first place was due to the newly implemented (at the time) Steam Refund program. Once they saw the volume of refunds, they realized they needed to take action.

This whole situation was a disaster. The only thing good that could possibly happen would be if the big developers learned a bit about QA prior to release on the PC.
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It wasn't really the developers fault in this case though. WB Games gave the PC port to another developer and gave them way too little time to properly port it. They rushed it and even reportedly told the folks at WB that it wasn't in any shape to ship and were ignored. The developers knew the PC version wasn't up to snuff and the publisher knew it too. Had it not been for the Steam refund program we likely would've been stuck with another Arkham Origins (a game that still has loads of bugs on the PC but which WB deemed to be "good enough" so they stopped patching it).

Them charging $50 for a four month old game that still has issues is nucking futz though. Were it not for the mea culpa freebies I doubt most people would even be looking twice at it.
 
H-street said:
if they pulled the game and are doing a re-release - I wouldn't want to wade through reviews from when the game was broken to make an informed buying decision..

IMO this is the right move..

I'm actually a little surprised at the flack WB is doing in trying to make this one right.. its something the PC community has wanted for a while and finally a published has stepped up and is doing the right thing instead of just trying to "Cash" out on the PC community with a shody port

I say Good Job WB and in that I'd even go so far as to say wipe out the reviews and start over :)
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?? are being serious? you do realize that they did "cash in" in june. you can thank steam refunds for this game getting fixed. if it really was a "good job wb" they wouldnt have released a game that badly broken.

side note, how are they still charging full price for a game that was released in june?
 
So is this game actually fixed now? Might pick this up if the issues are fixed.
 
I like this franchise and bought it yesterday and so far it's run fine for me. I think some indication should be made to segment the reviews, though prerelease isn't the most accurate way to put it. So far even with my old gaming rig it runs great though with only 2 GB 680s I have to use low textures and 3X SLI isn't working for me, zero performance gain at 1080p over a single card.
 
does anyone know what the problem with the game was? I got it when it first came out and it ran fine for me on my 4790K setup in my sig.
 
Love watching Internet dorks jump up and down full of outrage over a fucking video game. Get mad, nerds!
 
trick0502 said:
side note, how are they still charging full price for a game that was released in june?
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Cause it was pulled a few weeks later? I've never played it, but for those that don't rush out and buy games the day they're released (i.e. the smart money), it's a new game. I still wouldn't touch it until early adopters weigh in on the new release.

It's pretty sad/pathetic that WB pushed a game out 4 months before it was ready. What's the point? Isn't it better to put it out near Christmas?

I think the lesson is (and we've heard/said this every year for over 20 years), don't buy games the day they're released. Let the beta testers run 'em over for a week or two.

With that said, those who wait thank those of you who don't for beta testing, but we still call ya suckers ;)
 
Thank you for buying a Toyota Prius. We regret to inform you that due to the death in result of the gas pedal getting stuck we cannot offer you compensation because you seem to have bought one of our unfinished Beta released cars. Due to it being a Beta model the issue at hand is considered a bug. Bugs are to be expected in Beta release candidates and we welcome you to buy a fully upgraded and properly functioning vehicle this spring.
 
It's a bit deceiving to call something a "new release" when it was pulled for a do-over.

I think it's commendable that the game was fixed and if pulling it off the market to do it right, instead of patching it willy-nilly was what WB chose to do, good for them.

The game should be called a re-release or fixed release or something and older reviews should not be pulled.
People should get the background on what they're stepping into.
 
Kelby said:
Yeah I had a Nvidia key. We will see how "fixed" it is.
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I've got two Nvidia keys, but I won't waste the bandwidth downloading this steaming pile.

As far as rewriting history, I'll be paying attention to which "review" sites comply and reveal themselves as whores.
 
It's drama like this that makes it a much better idea to play games on a console where they actually run properly instead of fighting with a computer to so something it wasn't made to do in the first place. Play games on a gaming thingy and process words on a word processor thingy. Not that incomprehensible, people.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
It's drama like this that makes it a much better idea to play games on a console where they actually run properly instead of fighting with a computer to so something it wasn't made to do in the first place. Play games on a gaming thingy and process words on a word processor thingy. Not that incomprehensible, people.
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I don't play consoles games but would agree that console gaming is much more straightforward which is why I think consoles have a place. PC gaming tends to more flexible which adds complexity. Different things for different people.
 
Dwango said:
It wasn't really the developers fault in this case though. WB Games gave the PC port to another developer and gave them way too little time to properly port it. They rushed it and even reportedly told the folks at WB that it wasn't in any shape to ship and were ignored. The developers knew the PC version wasn't up to snuff and the publisher knew it too. Had it not been for the Steam refund program we likely would've been stuck with another Arkham Origins (a game that still has loads of bugs on the PC but which WB deemed to be "good enough" so they stopped patching it).

Them charging $50 for a four month old game that still has issues is nucking futz though. Were it not for the mea culpa freebies I doubt most people would even be looking twice at it.
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partially correct. It's because the PC devs wasted time fucking in Gameworks bullshit instead of a straight PC port.
 
heatlesssun said:
I don't play consoles games but would agree that console gaming is much more straightforward which is why I think consoles have a place. PC gaming tends to more flexible which adds complexity. Different things for different people.
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I like the idea of just sticking a disc into a mysterious box and playing something. I'm kinda thinking about a XBO maybe for Christmas. Either way, if I'm gonna get really into gaming, I'd never do it on a PC. They're just so much better for non-gaming tasks and you have to add otherwise unnecessary hardware to get them to clunk along playing games that work a lot better on the consoles they were designed for. (Obviously that rules out fun indie stuff and the occasional good sandboxy game that doesn't ever make it to a console, but those can be played on a iGPU a few years later.)
 
NickJames said:
That's true too, I keep forgetting about the new steam refunds. It most definitely aided in them fixing it. A good portion I would assume came from Nvidia keys though and those were non-refundable.
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How do you refund "free"? :p
 
I can see both sides of this.

If you see the reviews as reflective of WB and their software development and behavior, you'd want the old reviews to stand.

If - however - you are currently shopping on Steam, you'd really want to see the reviews that are reflective of the game in its current state. It doesn't matter if the game was broken at launch, if you didn't own it then, right? :p
 
For me is fine, as long as they do not outright remove the reviews. They took the game off and attempted to fix it, so they do deserve a means of differentiating the reviews so as to give future customers a better picture of the game's current state.
 
Unoid said:
partially correct. It's because the PC devs wasted time fucking in Gameworks bullshit instead of a straight PC port.
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But that was another concession to the publisher (who was likely kicked over some money from Nvidia). Rocksteady didn't do the PC port themselves and the developer it was handed over to wasn't given enough of a window to do the port properly. This whole thing was just a cash grab by Warner. At this point I wouldn't be shocked if they don't ever do another PC game port. With the Steam refunds they can't leave the consumer holding the bag any longer so it's not a totally free revenue stream.
 
From what I can tell, they did not fix it. Hence, this re-release should receive same panning as the original did.
 
Dwango said:
But that was another concession to the publisher (who was likely kicked over some money from Nvidia). Rocksteady didn't do the PC port themselves and the developer it was handed over to wasn't given enough of a window to do the port properly. This whole thing was just a cash grab by Warner. At this point I wouldn't be shocked if they don't ever do another PC game port. With the Steam refunds they can't leave the consumer holding the bag any longer so it's not a totally free revenue stream.
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And the team doing the port was comprised of about 10 people. And they did testing at ONLY 1280x720.
 
So I'm about an three missions into it. Should I have seen these issues by now? It's running great for me with low textures at 1080p using on a single stock 2GB 680 as SLI is still not there in this release.
 
Well what they added were the next two addendums:
1) if you are on windows 10, you need 12 GB ram or higher.

2) if you are on windows 7, you need to restart the game each couple hours.


That is it, they didn't really fix the page file memory leak, the game somehow works on ps4 and xb1 with 8gb ram shared between graphics, os and the actual game code, but it cant run properly in pc.
 
NickJames said:
Any other publisher would've just called the game finished and abandoned it. Glad WB manned up and actually decided to hault sales to fix their mess. Makes them better than 90% of big name publishers in my book.
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Same here. Sad they tried to push that shit on the masses initially, but they did the right thing in the end. They admitted they messed up and fixed it.

People can do great things. It's when they mess up and how they handle it when you see what kind of person they really are. Same with companies.
 
Lets not beat around the bush: The first time (ever?) a new release AAA PC game is recalled for bug fixing JUST SO HAPPENS to be weeks after the single biggest PC gaming sales platform (Steam) introduces a refund policy.


WB wasn't 'doing the right thing', They were being told by our wallets that this shit does not fly, now that a refund policy is in place: Publishers cant ride the waves of pre-orders and laugh all the way to the bank once the game releases.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I like the idea of just sticking a disc into a mysterious box and playing something. I'm kinda thinking about a XBO maybe for Christmas. Either way, if I'm gonna get really into gaming, I'd never do it on a PC. They're just so much better for non-gaming tasks and you have to add otherwise unnecessary hardware to get them to clunk along playing games that work a lot better on the consoles they were designed for. (Obviously that rules out fun indie stuff and the occasional good sandboxy game that doesn't ever make it to a console, but those can be played on a iGPU a few years later.)
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There really isn't any disadvantage to a PC and they're essentially the same hardware wise. The only major difference function wise between a regular PC and a gaming one is a dedicated GPU, which isn't exactly "clunking along" as its straightforward. The problem here is a company did not release a working product. It doesn't matter what platform or what type of product it is. If it is broken it won't work, period. AC: Unity was similar and was essentially broken at release across all platforms.
 
Flogger23m said:
There really isn't any disadvantage to a PC and they're essentially the same hardware wise. The only major difference function wise between a regular PC and a gaming one is a dedicated GPU, which isn't exactly "clunking along" as its straightforward. The problem here is a company did not release a working product. It doesn't matter what platform or what type of product it is. If it is broken it won't work, period. AC: Unity was similar and was essentially broken at release across all platforms.
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If only it were as simple as the GPU addition. Then there's drivers that never work right that people complain about constantly in this forum. There's the larger power supply that's required to support otherwise unnecessary functionality. There's more cooling fans that can fail or, in the case of really demented people, containers filled with liquid. Motherboards and cases must be larger than otherwise necessary to offer the additional internal space needed...and so on. A PC that's used for games that require something beyond integrated Intel graphics is just an expensive mistake on the part of the owner.
 
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