Warner Bros might have known about Batman: Arkham Knight’s PC issues for months

By Kris Wouk Published July 2, 2015

The issues affecting the PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight are well-known by now, and while developer Rocksteady is hard at work fixing these issues, questions are being raised over how much publisher Warner Bros Interactive knew before the game’s launch.

Warner Bros might have known about the rough shape of the PC port for months prior to the launch of Batman: Arkham Knight, according to sources close to Kotaku. Two anonymous sources who reportedly worked in quality assurance for the game say that Warner Bros wasn’t looking to pull one over on customers, it simply believed that the port was “good enough.”

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“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,” one of the sources, who claimed to have worked on the game for years, told Kotaku. “It’s been like this for months and all the problems we see now were the exact same, unchanged, almost a year ago.”

Shortly after the game’s release, Warner Bros pulled the PC version Batman: Arkham Knight from sale and issued an apology. A patch for the game has since been released that fixes certain issues, but developer Rocksteady says that there is a lot of work to be done before performance is significantly improved.

Part of the problem might have come in trying to keep the game’s story secret. To keep story elements under lock and key, traditional PC testing firms that are set up to test on many different hardware variations were avoided, according to one of Kotaku’s sources.

It’s important to note that at this time, these claims are far from confirmed. Digital Trends has reached out to Warner Brothers for comment on this issue, and will update this story once we receive a reply.

In the meantime, some of those who bought Batman: Arkham Knight, particularly those with powerful PCs, have been able to play through the game from start to finish with little to no issues. It’s clear from looking at the console versions that this is a game worth playing, and we’re hoping that soon more PC gamers will get a chance to see for themselves.

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Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…

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