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Kotaku: Sources say Warner Bros. Knew That Arkham Knight PC Was A Mess For Months

M

Mad Season

Banned
http://kotaku.com/sources-warner-bros-knew-that-arkham-knight-pc-was-a-1714915219

“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 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.”

Two sources, requesting anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their careers, spoke with Kotaku over the past week in hopes of explaining how the broken PC version of Arkham Knight made it out the door. They both said that Warner Bros. was aware of the many issues facing Arkham Knight on PC and that the publisher chose to ship the game regardless, not to maniacally screw over customers—but because they believed it was good enough.

Warner Bros. did not return my multiple requests for comment.
Click to expand...
 
A

Alcoholikaust

Member
1366817283831.gif
 
L

LiK

Member
Considering now prevalent the issues were with a large amount of users, there was no way they didn't know about this. Shameful.
 
O

Orayn

Member
So this just went up on Kotaku: http://kotaku.com/sources-warner-bros-knew-that-arkham-knight-pc-was-a-1714915219

“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 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.”

Two sources, requesting anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their careers, spoke with Kotaku over the past week in hopes of explaining how the broken PC version of Arkham Knight made it out the door. They both said that Warner Bros. was aware of the many issues facing Arkham Knight on PC and that the publisher chose to ship the game regardless, not to maniacally screw over customers—but because they believed it was good enough.
Click to expand...

Patrick Klepek has been in contact with sources who say that Arkham Knight's PC version has been in bad shape for many months and WB decided to do nothing.

EDIT: Beaten by a minute or two. Lock/merge please.
 
V

ViewtifulJC

Banned
Well, of course. There's just no fuckin' way a PC release THIS BAD at release could have gone completely unnoticed by everybody at WB and Rocksteady. They just chose to release it anyway. Didn't count on Steam Refunds being a thing.
 
V

Volotaire

Member
1321542383383669352.jpg
Click to expand...
“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 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.”

Two sources, requesting anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their careers, spoke with Kotaku over the past week in hopes of explaining how the broken PC version of Arkham Knight made it out the door. They both said that Warner Bros. was aware of the many issues facing Arkham Knight on PC and that the publisher chose to ship the game regardless, not to maniacally screw over customers—but because they believed it was good enough.

Warner Bros. did not return my multiple requests for comment.
Click to expand...

In the fallout from the PC version, Rocksteady claims it’s now actively working on the PC.
Click to expand...

Another source, who did not work on the QA team but was close to the game’s production, said this closely lined up with what they’d seen and heard throughout the game’s development.

In various meetings, QA teams were told the new consoles were “not nearly as easy to work with as [Rocksteady] expected” and testers should focus time on finding console bugs. This particular team was made up of roughly 100 people, with about 10% focused on the PC version
Click to expand...

Kotaku, Patrick Klepek

Much more at the link.
 
I

Ivan 3414

Member
Why wouldn't the publisher be aware of the game's issues far ahead of its release date? What exactly is noteworthy about this info?
 
T

Triggerhappytel

Member
Warner Bros. don't give a fuck. They're truly up there with Ubisoft and EA as the worst publishers, but for some reason it never seems to stick to them.
 
R

RipperGrim

Member
Of course it's true, there's no ways you can't see how bad it was. They just weren't counting on people getting refunds.
 
iNvid02

iNvid02

Member
Our second source said Warner Bros. internal QA focused on bug-checking specifically at 720p resolutions. Most PC players with decent hardware expect to run games at 1080p or higher. If Warner Bros. was using 720p at as a benchmark, that helps explain the large performance gap.
Click to expand...

the fuck is this
 
K

Khasim

Member
the publisher chose to ship the game regardless, not to maniacally screw over customers—but because they believed they would get away with shipping a broken game and still cash in on the pre-orders
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FTFY, if what this alleged QA tester is saying is true.
 
K

kewlmyc

Member
They probably figured they could get away with it, then Steam Refunds and reviews were introduced and fucked that right up. People who preordered could get their money back and could leave a bad review that shows up right when you get on the store page.
 
S

ShockingAlberto

Member
I'm guessing Steam Refunds caught WB off guard and that lead to the "We need to pull this game" response.

If they thought this version was good enough, they likely planned to just trick everyone into buying it, then maybe doing a few performance patches after release at best. No one could refund, so there would be no issue, and it would pick up the slack at a winter sale or something.

But refunding meant you lose the day-one buyers and it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to convince them to re-buy the game. The mea culpa is the best they could do to keep people from demanding their money back en masse.
 
G

Glass

Member
If it wasn't for Steam refunds, this would just be the latest in a long line of games to have a crappy launch and get fixed eventually. Instead, it blew up in their faces.
 
R

Recall

Member
Hattori said:
that's despicable if true
Click to expand...

It happens all the time.

Publishers are aware of all these issues with every release. If a team can't get a game to function properly it doesn't matter as long as they promise to fix it within a time frame.
 
J

jett

D-Member
Those motherfuckers.

I have nothing further.

Said these issues have been there for a year. How long is it going to take these people to fix this thing?
 
H

heringer

Member
Of course they knew. They simply didn't count on the backlash being this big, which was pretty naive on their part.
 
R

RukusProvider

Banned
Well it's not unprecedented in the PC space.

In our hobby many are quick to protest online about the state of games being released but still continue to support this practice and then are over the moon by subsequent patches. Patches that solely exist because the product was shipped in such a catastrophic state.

Had WB not done such a graphical downgrade to the point the console versions are superior, I'd wager they would have been able to get away with it.

I do not expect the WB situation to have any long term effect. We will continue to get unfinished products and paying full price for them.
 
RiccochetJ

RiccochetJ

Gold Member
They shipped it because they thought it was good enough? Someone over there must not have realized that Steam started allowing refunds recently then. They found out real quick that it in fact was nowhere near good enough.
 
SerTapTap

SerTapTap

Member
I mean it's kind of obvious, but it's nice to have sources stating it clearly and explicitly.

Publishers really need to be trained to just delay stuff. Delays are way, way better than a broken game.
 
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