Batman: Arkham Knight for PC pulled by Warner Bros after bugs and disastrous launch

Console version will continue to be on sale, and company says it is working ‘to deliver an updated version’ of the PC game

Warner Bros has pulled Batman: Arkham Knight from the shelves, days after it went on sale, because of a disastrous launch for a game that seemed to have huge problems.

The game went on sale earlier this week, on PC as well as Xbox One and PS4. But players immediately complained about juddering graphics, a slow frame rate and strange visuals.

Now publisher Warner Bros Games has pulled the release and will “work to deliver an updated version” of the game. It is no longer available to buy on the online Steam store or at retail locations, and people who have already bought the game can request a refund.

“We want to apologize to those of you who are experiencing performance issues with Batman: Arkham Knight on PC,” the company wrote in an update posted on the game’s forum. “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.”

Batman: Arkham Knight is the fourth and final part of the Batman: Arkham series, which began with Batman: Arkham Asylum in 2009. The newest game has received very good reviews on consoles, where it will continue to be on sale, but the PC release has been plagued by problems that are apparently the result of it being badly ported to PC.

Even before the publisher officially pulled the game, many retailers were reportedly receiving a huge amount of complaints about its quality. Green Man Gaming, an online games retailer, opted to change its refund policy in response to the game — previously not offering refunds if players didn’t like games, but reversing that restriction.

Players complaints included the fact that the developers had restricted the frame rate to 30fps, much slower than modern players expect, and that the game was showing strange textures.

The problems appear to have emerged when porting the game from the perfectly-running console version. That was done by an external studio, according to Warner Bros.