Warner Bros. Knew About Batman: Arkham Knight Problems?

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According to two anonymous sources, Warner Bros. supposedly knew about the problems with the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight but shipped the game anyway because they felt it was "good enough."

"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,” said one source (identified as a "quality assurance tester who worked on the game for years"). "It’s been like this for months and all the problems we see now were the exact same, unchanged, almost a year ago."
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So a game company knew that the title was in a defective form but shipped it anyway to basically allow the public to pay for bug fixes at premium prices.

In other news, the sky is blue and water is wet. Such is the nature of AAA development these days.
 
Its probably safe to say...that was the case. They postponed the release a few times....guessing the PC version was probably the last version on there list to fix.
 
Video games that are like spin-offs of other famous stuff like movies and comic books have a history of being totally lame things that are just kinda kicked together from scraps of old ideas on top of a broken game engine that makes it not fun to play. Examples can be found in like the millions of awful Star Wars games. People still buy them anyhow because of something famous in the title. That's been going on since like the dawn of time in 1920 and people are still somehow surprised now. It's sad.
 
Duh? I mean the whole reason stuff like this happens is to appeal to management who sets a date in stone, whether the game is ready or not.
 
So note to all those first day people and pre-orders - WAIT and stop doing this crap! you only fuel them to release more crap.
 
Not going to quote it because that is what CreepyUncleGoogle wants to do, but what the hell does that reply have to do with the subject of the thread? I would call that thread crapping and against rules 2, 3, 4 and 8.

Anyway...
It's nice to see Kotaku actually do a journalistic piece for a change. I'm still not ever going to visit the site again, but it's nice to know they're actually trying occasionally.
 
Armenius said:
It's nice to see Kotaku actually do a journalistic piece for a change. I'm still not ever going to visit the site again, but it's nice to know they're actually trying occasionally.
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AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA
I needed a good laugh.

While it is true that it isn't op-ed-ish, it's still "tabloid"-like which well....that's *taku for you.
 
Well either way it looks REAL bad for them, I mean either they knowingly put out garbage or they were to fucking stupid to know that it was garbage.
 
Of course WB fucking knew. Does anyone think they threw piles of money at Iron Galaxy and never saw where that money was going? Especially when WB also publishes the game? It is downright embarrassing WB acted like they had no idea how bad the game was before launch.
 
Of course they knew. It was business as usual to release a buggy PC port. Most gamers still can't wait even 24 hours for real reviews, so the game would make a fortune through pre-orders. Then Steam finally gives us (relatively) easy returns and WB was the first causality of that.
 
What's that you say? A game publisher knowingly released a shoddy product? No. That didn't happen. Game publishers are fine upstanding people who would never stoop to such lows for something so crass as a quick payday!
 
Koolthulu said:
Of course they knew. It was business as usual to release a buggy PC port. Most gamers still can't wait even 24 hours for real reviews, so the game would make a fortune through pre-orders. Then Steam finally gives us (relatively) easy returns and WB was the first causality of that.
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I hope a shit ton of people returned the game on Steam.
 
if sony/MS wanted this crap to stop, theyd disallow day one patches, and institute something like the first patch may only be released 3 months after launch.

game development was less complex back in the day, but you never saw this crap with offline consoles.
 
I would rather they knew about it than to have such a poorly organized company that they have no idea it is that buggy. Just sayin. Best case obviously is to delay release if it isn't ready but what do I know about marketing and the craziness those people cause.
 
Same thing I said on these forums about Project Cars being broken on AMD cards for 3 years. All the feedback in the world from testers can't fix games when glaring issues are ignored. Sometimes you need the public as a whole to give it negative feedback to light a fire under a developer's feet. Hopefully their next game will be properly bug tested before shipping.
 
Darunion said:
I would rather they knew about it than to have such a poorly organized company that they have no idea it is that buggy. Just sayin. Best case obviously is to delay release if it isn't ready but what do I know about marketing and the craziness those people cause.
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They knew it was a horrible port, they decided they would rather collect money than delay the release.
 
Sometimes has to signoff for release.

Duh!
 
The game industry needs to learn from its mistakes and NEVER sign up for hard deadlines with distributors and other business partners, as there is always variability in the development process.

The John Carmack approach of "when it's done" needs to become religion.
 
ocellaris said:
They knew it was a horrible port, they decided they would rather collect money than delay the release.
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Yup. And they'll keep doing it as long as our market keeps rewarding them for it by buying the trash before it is done.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041704245 said:
The John Carmack approach of "when it's done" needs to become religion.
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While I agree, it seems like what "done" is varies quite a bit from dev to dev.
 
Koolthulu said:
Of course they knew. It was business as usual to release a buggy PC port. Most gamers still can't wait even 24 hours for real reviews, so the game would make a fortune through pre-orders. Then Steam finally gives us (relatively) easy returns and WB was the first causality of that.
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HAHAHAHAHAH I think you mean the Steam users were the first casualty of this.

Make no mistake, NOTHING will change in the industry. All that will happen?

"So Steam does refunds now. That really screwed us on Arkham Knight. This new game is still buggy but not that bad. We know the nerds are going to buy it anyway... screw Steam, release on EA's Origin."

Or they'll work on their own digital distribution scheme. Then 6 months after they've released it that way, they'll release a "Steam Edition" and us nerds that didn't pre-order it on that alternative platform will buy it then.

The ONLY way refunds will have a lasting effect is if it goes Industry-wide (and does anyone really expect EA to offer refunds on all the games they sell??);
 
Koolthulu said:
Of course they knew. It was business as usual to release a buggy PC port. Most gamers still can't wait even 24 hours for real reviews, so the game would make a fortune through pre-orders. Then Steam finally gives us (relatively) easy returns and WB was the first causality of that.
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Thankfully, my copy was free with my 980 Ti and my backlog is so large right now that the game will be fixed before I get to it. /phew
 
psimitry said:
The ONLY way refunds will have a lasting effect is if it goes Industry-wide (and does anyone really expect EA to offer refunds on all the games they sell??);
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Origin started offering refundslong before Steam.
 
I wonder what they'll do to smooth things over with the PC community. Free game? Free DLC? Usually when companies fuck us over, they try to do something to make things right.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041704245 said:
The game industry needs to learn from its mistakes and NEVER sign up for hard deadlines with distributors and other business partners, as there is always variability in the development process.
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The people making those decisions don't develop games, likely don't really understand the process, and don't care beyond what they can immediately distill into dollars.
 
This "NEWS" shouldn't surprise anyone, nor is it important publishers/developers WILL continue these business practices so just get used to it. The only AAA games i can think of that came out this year on PC that had a relatively smooth launch is GTA5 and Witcher 3.
 
dreamcast87 said:
This "NEWS" shouldn't surprise anyone, nor is it important publishers/developers WILL continue these business practices so just get used to it. The only AAA games i can think of that came out this year on PC that had a relatively smooth launch is GTA5 and Witcher 3.
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scratch Witcher 3 off that list...only GTA 5
 
cinnamonandgravy said:
if sony/MS wanted this crap to stop, theyd disallow day one patches, and institute something like the first patch may only be released 3 months after launch.
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Beyond how this would be possible on the PC I doubt anyone would ever want Microsoft to do something like this with Windows.
 
Volkum said:
Thankfully, my copy was free with my 980 Ti and my backlog is so large right now that the game will be fixed before I get to it. /phew
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Yeah, or they'll eventually decide the PC version isn't worth it and shelve the whole thing.
 
redmasc said:
I wonder what they'll do to smooth things over with the PC community. Free game? Free DLC? Usually when companies fuck us over, they try to do something to make things right.
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How WB will "smooth things over with the PC community?" You get to buy the (hopefully working) game full price, with the season pass full price, with microtransactions/DLC full price, and you'll get a pink cape free of charge (which you can only get buy pre-ordering all of the above) for your troubles.
 
Dwango said:
Yeah, or they'll eventually decide the PC version isn't worth it and shelve the whole thing.
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Not sure won viable that would be at this point unless the PC version is that horribly broken. Plus it's supposed to be coming out for OS X and Linux this fall.
 
As expected, PC development continues to be the most difficult and resource draining platform to work on. This is nothing new. It's no wonder Rocksteady instead chose to work on consoles as did pretty much all AAA games developers.

Not expected: AK's PC port was done by IGS which also ported Origins. Had I known this, I would not have purchased this game sight unseen. It's no wonder the PC version had so many problems.

Lesson learned. I now believe all the naysayers that continues to preach to never pre-order PC games anymore. I believed in Rocksteady but no more. From now on it's wait for reviews for all PC games.
 
All this being said, did anyone actually buy this silly little game, or are all the people bitching and moaning recipients of free Nvidia video card game gifts? :p
 
I bought someone's gift. :p

That said, I love the arkham games, so I'll just wait patiently for a fix.
 
It is obvious they knew. That is why they locked the frame rate to 30FPS and then jacked up the system requirements, so that way when people complained, they could say that they are playing the game without the proper reqs.

The guys over at Iron Galaxy were probably telling them it was going to suck the whole way through, and then they probably got told to put the crappy GameWorks stuff on it at the last minute which shot the already dying horse right in the face.
 
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