Following last week’s re-release of a game still broken for many players, Warner Bros. is now offering full refunds on Steam copies of Batman: Arkham Knight until the end of the year. Everyone who purchased a copy should take advantage.
As the legend goes, Warner Bros. released a shoddy port of Batman: Arkham Knight for PC alongside the superior console releases back on June 23, despite reportedly knowing it was all sorts of broken. The next day Warner Bros. suspended sales of the PC version until it was in a more playable state. The company decided it was finally ready for re-release on October 28. Seems like they were wrong, and fans are still not happy.
And so Warner Bros. is allowing players to get a full refund on the Steam version of Arkham Knight until the end of 2015 regardless of how much they’ve played (or attempted to play) the game. Owners of the game can also get a refund on the downloadable content season pass with the game (but not separately).
The announcement came yesterday by way of a Steam post that began with another apology...
We are very sorry that many our customers continue to be unhappy with the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight. We worked hard to get the game to live up to the standard you deserve, but understand that many of you are still experiencing issues.
...and ended with a slightly ominous promise:
For those of you that hold onto the game, we are going to continue to address the issues that we can fix and talk to you about the issues that we cannot fix.
“Issues that we cannot fix” is kind of frightening, considering the amount of time developers have had to get this game off the ground for all players.
At this point I urge everyone capable of getting a refund to take it, even if their game is running fine now. Get what you need to do done by the end of the year, and get your money back.
This situation should not have occurred. PC versions of popular games should not be pawned off on development partners and released when they seem good enough. Different people people use different hardware, but meeting recommended PC specs for a game should at the very least grant players an experience equal to its console counterpart.
If you can’t get a good PC version launched in time either push it back or cancel it altogether. Stringing players along for months promising fixes that may or may not be implemented is unacceptable.
To contact the author of this post, who is really tired of writing about this bullshit, write to fahey@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @bunnyspatial.
Top image: another potentially disappointing Batman thing.