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Arkham on Fire

The PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight continues to be a comedy of errors. In spite of numerous patches, a complete relaunch, and loads of promises, the game nevertheless performs poorly on a wide range of PCs. Even with an actress four months to tidy up the mess, the developers still can't go the game to run reasonably well. After yet another tidal wave of negative customer feedback, Warner Bros. has caved, and is at present allowing for complete refunds until the end of the year.

In a message posted on the Arkham Knight Steam community page, a Warner Bros. representative announced that every owner of the PC version volition be able to return the game for a full refund. Regardless of how many hours you've played, you can get all of your money back until the end of the year. Did you purchase the season pass as well? Y'all can render that besides, but only if yous decide that you're willing to part with the core game as well — no backsies otherwise.

Over at the Digital Foundry, the operation analysis is showing lackluster results beyond the board. If you're running a graphics card with 2GB of memory, you can look pitiful performance on annihilation but the lowest texture setting. Rocking a loftier-end bill of fare with 4GB of memory? Y'all're probably yet better off locking the frame rate at 30fps to reduce stutter. Even running a GTX 980 and an i7-4790K, the Digital Foundry folks can't keep the frame charge per unit steady at 60fps. All these months later, and this port is still a massive headache.

Using the game's congenital-in 30fps cap, there's yet some serious problems with frame pacing. If you're using an Nvidia card, its proprietary control panel can solve that issue past using the half-rate adaptive v-sync choice. Merely if you lot're using an AMD card, yous're completely out of luck. If you're just dying to play this game, I'd recommend picking up a used PS4 or Xbox One copy if at all possible. Those versions tin only offer 30fps, only at least they're consistent.

Truth be told, I can't say I'chiliad surprised by whatever of this. Concluding week, I reported on the re-release of Arkham Knight, the bevy of make-goods, and the initial performance problems. I recommended against purchasing the game on PC for the time beingness, and this just confirms my suspicions. The PC release is still on fire, and based on some option wording in today'south announcement, I don't think it volition ever be completely fixed.

Earlier this year, I interviewed a few developers near the process of porting games. They had a lot of valuable insight on the process, but the biggest take-abroad for me was agreement just how complicated everything is. Even under optimal circumstances, delivering a polished port is a challenging task. And based on what we've heard, this scenario was far from ideal. It seems as if resources were deficient from the get-get, and the dev team has been under the gun to set this mess in a timely fashion. My eye goes out to all of the hard-working devs, but I accept absolutely zero sympathy for the suits at Warner Bros. who continue to try to sell consumers a broken game. It'southward inexcusable.