Rumour - WB Knew Batman Arkham: Knight PC Was Pants

Rumours are shifty things, and we should recognise that we're more inclined to trust ones which support our existing opinions. That said, I TOLD YOU SO. A mate of Ian Video Games has told Kotaku that publishers Warner Bros. knew for ages that the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight [official site] was wonky - it's bad enough that WB have pulled it from sale while it's being fixed - but released it anyway.

"I will say that it's pretty rich for WB to act like they had no idea the game was in such a horrible state," a quality assurance tester told Kotaku, anonymously because y'know they probably want to work in this industry again. "It's been like this for months and all the problems we see now were the exact same, unchanged, almost a year ago."

They add that the QA team "reported literally thousands of bugs that were specific to the PC version relating to the frame rate". They also say that the PC QA team was a lot smaller than those for the console versions, as Rocksteady were finding the new consoles tricky to work with. Supposedly, WB's QA team focused on testing the game in 720p resolution too, where performance problems would be less apparent.

So they say, anyway. Ian Video Games once told me he was mates with Ed Sheeran. But I'm more inclined to believe this anonymous source than I am Ian, and a second one who backed up the generalities of the tester's accusations.

Anyway, I won't repeat everything and swipe Kotaku's scoop - go read.

So it tends to go with buggy AAA games. Testers ferret out bugs, then devs decide which are most important, going by the amount of time they're given by producers and leads, who in turn fit to schedules decided with publishers. It's a failure which spreads and cascades. This is a fairly typical story, only more severe than usual.