Warner Bros. Halts Sales of AAA Batman PC Game Over Technical Problems

An anonymous reader writes: The Batman: Arkham series of video games has been quite popular over the past several years. But when the most recent iteration, Batman: Arkham Knight, was released a couple days ago, users who bought the PC version of the game found it suffered from crippling performance issues. Now, publisher Warner Bros. made an official statement in the community forums saying they were discontinuing sales of the PC version until quality issues can be sorted out. Gamers and journalists are using it as a rallying point to encourage people to stop preordering games, as it rewards studios for releasing broken content.

Comments

Pre-ordering

[ArcadeMan]

Pre-ordering can be a bad thing because it allows big studios to release low-quality games, but at the same time it can be a good thing because it does help indies and small studios to pay for the development of their games.

There's only one game that's on my list right now: Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime

Re:Pre-ordering

[TheCarp]

Its funny but people who wait are the real winners. Wait until after the game is out and hits a sale. You get the game at a cheaper price AND you get the bug fixes that came out since then. The only thing it cost you, was waiting to play it a bit, and you get a better product for less. How is that not winning?

But, as you say, with Indie games, small studios.... its a different story. Hell, I will pay for early access if I like a game, I don't even mind that its buggy because I know I chose that AND I know I am supporting an indie developer who might not otherwise even be able to produce the game.

The big boys who can afford advertising campaigns and multiple major releases per year? Feel free to hold them to a high standard, they should be setting the standard not be rewarded resting on their laurels.

Re:Broken Content

[maugle]

Yep, back before consoles could be expected to have local storage and a persistent Internet connection, the inability to patch games after release made QA a critically important part of development. Now the balance has shifted to rushing the game out ASAP, and only devoting resources to fixing bugs if the early buyers complain loudly enough to dissuade other potential customers.

Though I prefer the way Yahtzee put it: "You couldn't get away with releasing a buggy game in the cartridge and cassette days; you'd be trampled under the company Brontosaurus."

Because downloadable version is overpriced

[tepples]

Title was no longer available for digital purchase

Why do you care about having a physical copy?

Answered before you asked. In some cases, sellers of downloadable works have in the past ended redownload privileges even to paying customers without compensating them. Look at all the PlaysForSure music stores, for instance.

Second, a lot of physical stores still sell physical copies cheaper than Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, or Valve sells the downloadable version. It's like Amazon, where some print books are cheaper than the Kindle edition.

Re:flag

[Darinbob]

This is how it works on wikipedia. One moment you're looking up how kalman filters work and then 8 hours later you're still browsing but looking at the history of bamboo plantations.