Batman: Arkham Knight PC sales suspended amid performance issues

Publisher Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment said it has opted to “suspend future game sales” of the recently-released PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight, a version that has been riddled with serious performance issues.

It’s not too often a publisher or developer outright suspends the sale of a game post-launch – typically in the days and weeks following a rocky launch, the game remains available as patches are issued. The fact that Arkham Knight PC was pulled reflects the severity of the problems that WB sees with the game, which has been one of the most anticipated triple-A releases of 2015.

The critically-acclaimed console versions of the open world action game were developed by UK-based Rocksteady, while the PC port was handled by an external studio, Iron Galaxy.

Game director Sefton Hill tweeted the following, prior to today's announcement of the sales suspension:

 

“We want to apologize to those of you who are experiencing performance issues with Batman: Arkham Knight on PC,” added a post from Gary Lake-Schaal, VP of game technology at Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, on the game's Steam blog.

“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," the statement continued. "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.”

For people who bought the PC version and are experiencing issues, the post suggested waiting until the issue is resolved, or failing that, asking for a refund.

On Steam, Arkham Knight has over 8,000 user reviews for the PC version that are "Mostly Negative," whereas the PlayStation 4 version has received critic reviews averaging 89/100.