We’ve been waiting for Warner Bros to release a huge patch for Batman: Arkham Knight on PC to address the game’s huge technical shortcomings, but it’s not coming for another “few weeks”. Last we heard, it was supposed to come out this month.
If you’re not familiar with what went wrong with Arkham Knight on PC, read my report on it. In short, the game runs like crap, Warner Bros. knew it would, and they stopped selling the game.
“The teams have been working hard to address the issues with the PC version of the game,” the publisher said in a recent update on Steam. “We are happy to confirm that we are now putting the first interim patch into testing. If all goes well, we expect to issue the patch in the next few weeks. We’ll be sure to report back in the next two weeks on how the testing is coming along.”
There’s some confusing language there. Even though the patch is expected in “the next few weeks,” we’ll hear how “testing is coming along” in two weeks. It doesn’t seem like Warner Bros. wants to promise anything before they’re ready to deliver, so the timing remains vague.
Of course, that makes sense. At this point, you can’t even buy Arkham Knight on PC and the word-of-mouth has been terrible. When this patch is released, it really needs to do its job.
The company outlined what its top priorities are with this patch, too:
- Reduced frame rate hitches
- Optimised system memory and VRAM usage
- Improved performance on all GPUs (requires the latest drivers)
- Min Spec AMD GPU is once again the Radeon HD 7870 2GB
More Robust In-Game Settings, including:
- Added the ability to change settings for Max FPS to 30/60/90
- Added toggles for Motion Blur, Chromatic Aberration, and Film Grain
- Added a “High” Texture Resolution value
- Added Texture Filtering option
- Added an Adaptive V-Sync option (NVIDIA only)
- Added VRAM Usage Meter
- Added Mouse Sensitivity Slider & Mouse Smoothing Option
- Fixed low resolution texture bugs
- Fixed hitches when running on mechanical hard drives (HDD)
Even if you already own Arkham Knight on PC, Warner Bros. hasn’t delivered any season pass content for that version of the game. (That might not be a big deal — it hasn’t been good so far.)
So once this mythical patch drops — and assuming it works — they’re hoping to focus on this:
- Skipping the boot up splash screens
- DLC/Season Pass content
- Additional updates such as Photo Mode
The waiting game continues.
Comments
7 responses to “Arkham Knight PC Is Still Broken And Will Be For A While”
While this is disappointing, I’m not holding out much hope for the PC version of this game anymore. Anyone who really wanted to play it has already picked it up on Xbox One of PS4, and have enjoyed this amazing game. While PC players are left out in the cold again on a major release, lets hope that all publishers make a call in the future to delay releases of any games that are experiencing these issues before launch.
I’m pretty sure that the PC version will definitely be released this has been such a public shaming of warner bros that they will have to fix the pc version or lose an incredible amount of face. They have not only had the item refunded and suspension of sales, but outlets have also returned their stock (transport costs alone would be staggering for that). Warner bros have also “promised” to fix the pc version so they have put their integrity on the line. Releasing a buggy version is one thing but never fixing a product after publicly stating intention to do so… that is the stuff that nukes share prices. It will definitely be fixed but we may see a game of the year version out before then. 2016 mid year at the earliest is my best guess.
Why would you think that anyone who wanted to play it already has?
The Arkham games are some of my all time favourites, but I don’t have a current gen console, so I just have to wait.
My main reason for putting off buying it was more the eventual GOTY edition with all the DLC, but from the sounds of it, the DLC isn’t worth waiting for.
I thought I was being clever getting both the game and season pass for $50. Now I just feel like WB suckered me.
Pity people are thinking of it so negatively – finished it already near 100%, and on New Game Plus now and I loved it. Not as good as Asylum but I enjoyed it more than City/Origins. I’m just hoping they fix it all up so the DLC comes along and more people can enjoy it.
Performance improvements are necessary, but I find the promise of more settings… interesting. These settings already exist and are easily modified in a config file. It probably took a dev all of half a day to build the menu with the toggles in it. Looks like they were fishing for stuff to plump up their changelog so it didn’t simply read “performance improvements”
Also, they’re hoping to focus on “Skipping the boot up splash screens”? There’s already a -nologo startup option for that… I’m not sure what they’re trying to do here.
…still, eagerly awaiting their first patch. Hopefully it can improve performance enough that I can actually play the game.