The PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight will probably go down as one of the most disastrous launches in video game history.
First launched in June, the game suffered from so many technical issues, publisher Warner Bros. decided to pull it from sale and offer a full refund to anyone who bought the game. After four months back in the oven, Warner Bros. re-released the game last week, but players immediately reported that the game was suffering from technical issues, some old, some new, that were preventing them from playing the game.
Videos by VICE
It didn’t seem as bad as the original launch, but it’s hard to gauge so soon just how widespread problems are, and how angry players will get. The fixed-up version of the game that went back on sale last week is still in such a sorry state, Warner Bros. is now once again offering full refunds to anyone who bought it.
Players have until the end of 2015 to ask for a full refund for Batman: Arkham Knight, regardless of how much time they’ve played the game. That’s more lenient than Steam’s official refund policy, which won’t accept refunds if you’ve played a game for more than two hours. Warner Bros. first announced the refunds for Steam only, but another big digital game store, Green Man Gaming, is now honoring the refunds as well.
I feel a little bad for pointing this out, but that basically mean you can buy the game, and play it as much as you want until the end of the year, then still get your money back—assuming it works on your PC.
“We are very sorry that many [of] our customers continue to be unhappy with the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight,” Warner Bros. said. “We worked hard to get the game to live up to the standard you deserve, but understand that many of you are still experiencing issues.”
If the game is still broken, offering full refunds is obviously the right thing to do, and sadly something that most publishers don’t offer so readily. On the other hand, holy hell, I can’t believe that this is still happening to a major publisher and one of the biggest game releases of the year. We see broken games launch all the time, but this saga is on a new level.
