Batman Arkham Knight Release Date for PC and Issues; Patch Updates and Refund

By Mark Rollins
Batman Arkham Knight
Image: Warner Bros. Interactive

Batman: Arkham Knight had an incredible release date on June 23, 2015, unless you purchased the PC version.  Sadly, there were so many troubles with it that Warner Brothers was forced to suspend the PC version until further notice, and here is what we know about the Batman: Arkham Knight Release Date for the PC and its issues. 

Fans of the Batman: Arkham series of games rushed to pick it up on its release date, but PC users began to report many, many problems shortly afterward.  According to Ubergizmo, users reported that the game has been capped at 30 frames per second (fps), which is not only a sub-par frame rate, but it has been known to drop down to 10 fps when driving or gliding.  This has occurred on users who run extremely high-end graphics cards like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980, Titan X, and AMD R9 290X have reported the game going into levels as low as 3 fps. 

Eventually, this led to this being posted on the official Batman: Arkham Knight forums:  "We take these issues very seriously and have therefore decided to suspend future game sales of the PC version while we work to address these issues to satisfy our quality standards.  We greatly value our customers and know that while there are a significant amount of players who are enjoying the game on PC, we want to do whatever we can to make the experience better for PC players overall."

Unfortunately, a recent report from Kotaku reveals that Warner Brothers actually knew that the game was not in the best shape, but released it anyway, not to mess with customers, but because they believed that it was good enough.    

Those who have played the game for less than 2 hours and bought the game on Steam can make a request within 14 days of purchase in order to qualify for a refund.  Users of the PC version of the Batman: Arkham Knight game can also take it back to the store where they purchased it and get a refund that way.  That, or you could remain patient until it is all sorted out.

According to separate article from Ubergizmo, it looks like there is one, presumably of many, patches available.  This first patch fixes issues that include a crash when exiting the game, a bug which disabled rain effects and ambient occlusion, and issue that caused Steam to re-download the game when verifying the integrity of the game cache through Steam client, not to mention a bug that caused the game to crash when turning off the Motion Blur.

There hasn't been any timeline promised for the next set of patches, nor is there any new news about a release date for the PC version. 

Batman: Arkham Knight is a long awaited conclusion to the Batman: Arkham series. The first game in the series was Batman: Arkham Asylum.  Debuting in 2009, the extremely dark take on the DC Universe iconic character was met with many accolades, including Game of the Year on several lists.  Its sequel Batman: Arkham City came out in 2011, and was also well-received, setting up for a trilogy.  What came out in 2013 was Batman: Arkham Origins, which is set up as a prequel to the series.  The trilogy has concluded with Batman: Arkham Knight