Just a day after its launch, Warner Bros. last night suspended Windows PC sales of Batman: Arkham Knight. The move comes in the wake of thousands of negative user reviews for the highly anticipated finale to the Rocksteady Studios trilogy.
The game has been removed from sale on Steam, although the listing remains.
Complaints about the technical performance of the PC version began to flood social media and Steam shortly after Arkham Knight's debut on Tuesday, with many users and observers dubbing the launch a "disaster." Rocksteady's initial statement on Tuesday referred to "our external PC development partner," which led to the determination that the PC port was outsourced to 12-person developer Iron Galaxy Studios.
Here's the statement posted Wednesday by Warner Bros. on the WB Games forum:
We want to apologize to those of you who are experiencing performance issues with Batman: Arkham Knight on PC. 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.
Thank you to those players who have already given valuable feedback. We are continuously monitoring all threads posted in the Official Batman: Arkham Knight Community and Steam forums, as well as any issues logged with our Customer Support (support.wbgames.com). If you purchased your copy of the game and are not satisfied with your experience, then we ask for your patience while these issues are resolved. If desired, you can request a refund at help.steampowered.com (Steam refund policies can be found here: http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds) or the retail location where you purchased the game.
The Batman: Arkham fans have continually supported the franchise to its current height of success, and we want to thank you for your patience as we work to deliver an updated version of Batman: Arkham Knight on PC so you can all enjoy the final chapter of the Batman: Arkham series as it was meant to be played.
The Linux, Mac and SteamOS versions of Arkham Knight are still listed for release in the fall.