Duh
“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,” an anonymous quality assurance tester on Arkham Knight told Kotaku. “It’s been like this for months and all the problems we see now were the exact same, unchanged, almost a year ago.”
Kotaku’s two sources said Warner Bros. knew the PC version of Batman was bunk, but figured it was good enough to be released. Unfortunately for Warner Bros., it released Arkham Knight shortly after Steam started allowing for refunds. This, most likely, explains why WB seemingly did the right thing in halting further sales until the “significant” amount of work to be done gets the PC port up to snuff with the occasionally glitchy, but mostly smooth operating PS4 version.
Of course, you should not need an anonymous source to tell you that Warner Bros. knew of the PC version’s problems. How could it not know? Sure, there were somethings that could exacerbate a disconnect: Rocksteady supposedly not working at all on the PC version (those duties were handed off to Iron Galaxy); only 10% of testers were devoted to PC because, PS4/Xbox One were “not nearly as easy to work with as [Rocksteady] expected”; bug-checking taking place primarily at 720p; and fear of spoiler leaks kept Knight from “PC testing firms that are used to stress test games on different hardware configurations.” But there is hardly ever a time when a problem game ships unaware. Dead or Alive 5 PC doesn’t have working multiplayer three months after release.
Batman moves consoles and moves on consoles. Warner Bros. put its efforts (and directed Rocksteady’s) into those versions. The same thing just happened with High Voltage Software’s PC port of the WB-published Mortal Kombat X. Of fucking course it knew about the PC version’s problems; it just thought it could get away with releasing it anyways. And taking your $60 in the hope that, post-patch, the game could mend your relationship and minimize your irritation.
Sources: Warner Bros. Knew That Arkham Knight PC Was A Mess For Months [Kotaku]