Not all PC ports are created equal, and Batman: Arkham Knight seems to be an especially bad one. The morning after the PC version unlocked, Warner Bros. confirmed it’s working on fixes.
The game’s community manager released a brief statement on the official forums:
Hi all
We’re aware that some users are reporting performance issues with the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight. This is something that Rocksteady takes very seriously. We are working closely with our external PC development partner to make sure these issues get resolved as quickly as possible.
We’ll update this thread when we’ve got more info to share.
Some PC ports end up causing problems for users of one card manufacturer or the other. That’s pretty common, shitty as it might be. In this case, however, both Nvidia and ATI owners are reporting significant performance issues on anything but the most powerful machines around.
Kotaku’s own Kirk Hamilton has played around with the PC version, and confirmed it’s not in good shape. He said the PlayStation 4 version, however, is rock solid.
Here’s a video from Rock Paper Shotgun illustrating some of the issues:
Generally speaking, though:
- The batmobile sequences (of which there are many) cause the frame rate to tank.
- The frame rate is locked to 30 frames-per-second, unless you modify an INI file.
- There’s constant stuttering, which makes playing the game incredibly difficult.
- When attempting to verity the game cache, sometimes it ends up deleting the game.
Warner Bros. ports have been all over the place lately. Shadow of Mordor was terrific. Batman: Arkham Origins was also great! Mortal Kombat X? Less said about the PC version, the better. As Warner Bros.’ comment indicates, Rocksteady did not handle the PC port, and the game’s credits list Killer Instinct: Season Two developer Iron Galaxy as having provided “PC support.”
Steam users are, understandably, really pissed off. Take a look at the negative reviews so far:
This should prove an interesting test case for Steam’s refund system, and some users are already reporting Valve’s giving their money back:
They may simply be the first of many. Let us know how the PC version is faring for you!
You can reach the author of this post at patrick.klepek@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @patrickklepek.