First, a question: I finished the main quest line last night; it seemed a bit abrupt and no credit roll... do you have to complete the side quests to complete the game? It felt kind of bizarre where they left it.

Second, a tiny rant: I had zero issues playing this game over the last week

on my PC;

my AMD PC,

my 3 year old PC.

I understand that everyone has a different setup and will in turn have a different experience, but In this case my setup should have had the most problems yet somehow I had none; the only conclusion I can draw from this is that the launch issues that made this game infamous and still haven't been patched and are preventing this game from being sold, were blown completely out of proportion and I think this is a dangerous road to go down. It wasn't that long ago that many developers refused to develop for PC; now I can understand why they would feel that way and I worry about it happening again.

I think people need to give this game a fair shot on the PC

Just because you didn't experience any problems doesn't mean that the PC version of Arkham Knight is perfectly fine. There have been simply too many reports and videos of the game's performance problems. The fact that the game was pulled from Steam and hasn't been rereleased a full month after launch says enough.

SOme people dont have issues, my brand new Nvidia machine had a fair amount of chug, so it is still a dice roll. And yes. You do need all the side missions including the riddler crap to roll credits. Youtube is a cool thing isnt it?

That's probably how it got released in the first place.

"It works on my PC"

"Great, ship it!"

Yeah, you have to 100% the game to get the true ending. It's not much better though, you should just youtube it.

the launch issues that made this game infamous and still haven't been patched and are preventing this game from being sold, were blown completely out of proportion and I think this is a dangerous road to go down. It wasn't that long ago that many developers refused to develop for PC; now I can understand why they would feel that way and I worry about it happening again.

If Warner Bros. were not capable or willing to develop a proper PC version of the game then they just shouldn't have bothered. I expect a high level of quality when I'm dropping money on big games like these, especially now that they're pushing £40 on Steam, and in the case of Batman it did not meet those expectations in terms of performance, graphical features, and user options. Other similar games have shown a significantly higher level of competency by their developer and so the reaction to the quality of this PC version is entirely justified.

All one needs to do to confirm that the game had some serious problems is to watch any number of YouTube videos from countless individuals or media outlets about how straight up broken Arkham Knight was. The game being removed from sale, WB apologizing for the sad state it was released in, and it still not being available to buy on PC all pretty good indications to me that there was fire there and not just smoke.

Yeah, you have to do everything but the Riddler stuff to get the credits and an end, which is unfortunate on its own, but then to get the real, extended end, you have to finish all the Riddler stuff, so it's best to watch it on YouTube, because it's certainly not worth doing them just for that.

@chu52: You don't need to do the Riddler stuff for credits, just so you know.

If the technical issues had happened to you, you probably wouldn't be arguing that everybody just suck it up in fear of scaring away PC development.

2 months later and still no fixes for my frame rate drops, ye i'm sure it's a great game.

I understand that everyone has a different setup and will in turn have a different experience, but In this case my setup should have had the most problems yet somehow I had none; the only conclusion I can draw from this is that the launch issues that made this game infamous and still haven't been patched and are preventing this game from being sold, were blown completely out of proportion and I think this is a dangerous road to go down. It wasn't that long ago that many developers refused to develop for PC; now I can understand why they would feel that way and I worry about it happening again.

Eesh. This was frustrating to read.

i'll admit for once there seems to be some truth to the internet rage this time around, but i also think generally we tend to lionize things way, way too often nowadays, and make mountains out of molehills. the absolute shit-bile you see spewed on steam forums and the way people like to bandy about words like "atrocity" makes me always take these reports with a grain of salt. the momentum of a mob mentality can be a ugly sight to behold.

i wonder when (if?) this ever goes back up if WB will offer any freebies or a discount. i'd still like to pick it up, given it ends up being pretty damn good in the end.

I have to wonder what settings you were playing the game on? I'd assume most of the issues that came with the pc port came when people wanted to test their shiny new gfx card at max settings and getting the problems.

Well, I ran the game on a GTX 770 4GB and it runs like complete shit. I finally quit as its barely playable with the low frame rates and hitching. Also I feel like I hear more stories about the game running fine on older hardware. The issues were not blown out of proportion.

Do you really think the game would have been pulled (especially for this long) if the issues weren't pretty damn widespread? One of WB's biggest titles of the year? Really?

I dropped everything to low, and 720p on a GTX 770, and it did nothing to help. There are serious issues in the coding for some systems. I heard some people with Titan cards getting poor performance.

@john1912: Youch! Sucks that this may very well be the stamp note to the arkham series.

It's kind of hard for me to believe you didn't have any issues such as the low texture bug, no AO, no rain effects, or stuttering when unlocking 60fps in the batmobile.

It's impossible to win this argument... You can't prove it one way or the other, but it's too late: the internet has spoken: AK is a broken game. Doesn't matter what the real numbers are. Even saying WB pulled the game is not proof. They could have pulled the game due to bad press just as much as actual purchases/refunds/reported issues. Literally not one person alive has numbers they have shared that says W number of items listed in QA/Testing, X number of PC copies were sold, Y number were refunded, Z number reported issues. Without that data, everything is conjecture and assumption.

I played AC Unity on release week and had a total of 0 noticeable problems. Ever. I had a perfect experience in my opinion, and for that I was rewarded by being bored to tears. But, yeah, many people it seems had issues. 1%? 10%? 50%? We'll never know!

The point is it doesn't really matter what the truth is. Perception is everything. AK is perceived to be a broken, problematic game, and neither 50,000 positive steam reviews, 1,000,000 forum posts, or any number of YT videos will change that. In games, perception gets set and stays that way. AK may be fixed one day, but it will carry this stigma of being busted forever. When it does go on sale again it will be derided and laughed at and it still won't be good enough. When it goes on sale we can all say "oh now it's worth getting".

I don't blame anyone for complaining about the problems they encounter with games, but 90% of that communication does seem to happen in an overblown, childish way. People do need to grow up, regardless of whether the issues are real or not. A wonky piece of software you purchased does not entitle you to scream at anybody. Get a refund or wait. Play something else. That's what kills me with this shit. Not how real or not real the problems are, but the anger and vitriol, the language used to express this is just completely bananas.

GTX 980 and HD7950 before that, and it ran like shit on both until I downloaded a mod and updated to windows 10(which seemed to fix the massive memory leak I had). After that it was playable with only minor stutters . I'm currently 97 or 98% and have about 150 more riddler trophies to get before i can get the "real" ending, i completed the main quest line as well.

Also if you have more than 8gb of ram i think that makes the biggest difference in how well this game runs, more so than brand or tier of graphics card.

@geraltitude I don't get what argument there is to win? If you didn't have issues with the game, your obvious in the minority. Weed past the people who complain about 60fps and water textures and you get to the memory leak, stuttering, crashes etc

There are two endings - you know how there is the mission select wheel, you have to complete all but 1 segment to activate the Knightfall protocol in the menu and see one of the endings. For most people, myself included, this is everything except the Riddler stuff.. If you do everything, when you activate the Knightfall protocol you can see the alternate/true ending. I enjoyed the game and doing most of the side stuff. The Riddler stuff has been tedious since City, and so I just looked that ending up on youtube to see the difference.

@geraltitude: I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. It's pretty clear that a significant number of PC players had serious problems with AK, and when their complaints reach a certain volume I don't believe it's conjecture anymore. Also, a publisher wouldn't pull a product from sale to save face on the PR front if they didn't think there was a very real problem with said product. If people lashed out so be it. People tend to get pissed off when they spend $60 on something that doesn't work as it should. And WB knew it, that's why I don't have any sympathy for them.

The ending is pretty bad, especially if this is supposed to wrap up the Arkham games. I'm not going to hunt down every trophy just to get the real ending, that's absurd. What happens at the end of the main story missions is the ending, and it's not very good.

As for performance, there are a ton of problems. For me it was the memory leak and stuttering, but it was way worse for others. I couldn't get a constant frame rate no matter what I did. As soon as I'd start going fast in the Batmobile (which is a required part of the game) the frame rate would start bouncing around between 20-60. If I locked the frame rate to 30 (which is completely unacceptable in an action focused PC game) it would still stutter and drop. I was able to play and finish the game, but I'd give it a negative review just for the performance problems.

@oursin_360: Oh I'm talking to the OP and more generally to his point about "issues being overblown". No one can prove it one way or the other is what I'm saying. Get me some numbers of 1) unique complaints 2) owners 3) refunds and 4) test data direct from the developer and then I will be happy to say "Yes, for sure, Arkham Knight as a piece of software is, for the majority of its users, broken." Until then saying that would be a lie or a guess for me. But read below to see why all of that is completely irrelevant to me anyways.

My first point is you don't know, you think. You say "pretty clear" and "I don't believe it's conjecture" all of which translates to "I don't 100% know for sure": you don't know how many people own AK on PC and how many people had which problems and to what extent. You don't know why WB made any of the decisions it has made, only that it has. My point is also that it is super duper irrelevant if you know or don't and how real or not real the problems are. I mean, philosophically, morally, maybe it matters, but that's an aside.

Either way, all that matters is that there is a popular consensus on the internet that AK is broken, not whether it really is or is not.

I'm not asking you to have sympathy for the developer. That's bizarre. Dunno where you picked that up from... But problems with games, real or not real, massive or minor, never justify (much of) the language people use to communicate their experiences. Again, please remember I am responding to the OP here. His point is that issues are being overblown, which is a product of the language being used. It's from a) the number of people complaining (no issue with that) b) the number of complaints (no issue with this either really) and c) how they are complaining (this is where we have problems, and where issues can be overblown by using really harsh language, threats, hate threads, etc).

"If people lashed out so be it" is wrong. That's garbage society 101. People should complain like civil humans. No exceptions. Refunds do far more good than bad attitudes and I'm a little stunned anyone here would suggest it's OK to lash out. It's normal, sure, but not OK as a behavior.

@geraltitude: Ok, you want to play blind man that's your prerogative but my eyes are wide open on this. We know there was a problem with the PC version of AK. The OP's point of "I didn't experience any problems so everyone must be blowing this out of proportion" is a logical fallacy of the highest order. Also, curious why anyone claiming there to be a problem has to cite extensive data for it to be credible, yet you definitively state that 90% of complaints are "overblown" and "childish". Did you conduct your own research? Where did you pull this figure? Is there an impartial committee that deems what is childish and overblown or did you decide this for yourself?

And about people's reactions, I focus on things I can change and don't worry about things I can't. I can't control how people will react in mostly an anonymous way. It's wrong and I wouldn't act that way but it's a symptom of internet culture that isn't going away anytime soon. I wouldn't necessary draw an allegory to society as a whole.

I understand what your saying, i guess since i experienced 90% of the issues people complained about i tend to believe them. I do know for a fact pc players go crazy over little shit like calling wticher 3 a downgrade and making 100reddit posts talking about it like it's not a beautiful game lol. All i can say is that for whatever reason enough people were unsatisfied to refund it and force WB's hand, I don't feel like that typically happens with games that are functioning as intended especially because when it's working the game is just as good if not better than the other installments.

Edit: Since this is an active thread, they posted info on the patch and....they'll get back to us in another 2 weeks. https://community.wbgames.com/t5/Support-for-PC/August-20-Update-on-PC-Version-of-Arkham-Knight/m-p/732718#U732718

Continually patching something that apparently isn't even broken? WB, you so crazy!

OP, I have a GTX980 in my case and still encountered some pretty bad memory leaking that rendered the game more or less unplayable after an hour of continuous play. So good for you I guess, but that doesn't mean it isn't actually broken for others.