WB is Now the Worst AAA Publisher

UPDATE 3: Well, there goes any good faith WB has left with this trash. They got some back when they pulled the game, as we all gave them the benefit of the doubt. After all who stops selling a game? That was never done before? But then came reports that WB knew how bad the game was and pushed it out anyway.... but of course when the source we can find everyone using is Kotaku, I have to err on the side of caution. And then, Rocksteady themselves told the world it wasn' there fault, WB put Iron Galaxy on the port process... who then had a total of 12 people do the job. This is worrying, but at the same time, it's become standard when shit hits the fan and it costs the big publishers cash to pass the buck, I wasn't ready to see this kind of statement as big news. Overall, bad news, but not exactly news I saw as huge for one reason or another.

Today, however, WB's own behavior has ended that. The Batgirl DLC launched for the new Batman game today. This wouldn't be anything of note, if WB's PR people hadn't been telling PC gamers fixing their version is their top priority for weeks now, which would suggest either this was already made and cut from the game (the same bullshit gamers have railed on Capcom for in the past) or the company decided they were eating too many returns and lied to a part of their audience to stem the tied. Either way, this does not look good... then we get this bullshit. Seriously, read this. Basically their PR are telling anyone who didn't refund their pile of shit and the season pass they got with it that they are going to wait indefinitely while the teams do what they should have before the game launched, and the new patch possibility? Gone. And not only that, but with the two week limit is now up to refund a game for anyone who still owns it, they are stuck with that smell, settling for a broken game and one piece of DLC they are STILL EFFECTIVELY SELLING AT $40!

Of course reports are already coming in that the new DLC is about an hour or so of content and several hours of item collection filler...and somehow, I don't think WB has much respect for any part of it's audience.... considering anyone who pre-orders anything with them absolute chumps who have already given them their money... so as I said, all good faith in this company as a publisher is gone. As a fan of the F.E.A.R franchise, I didn't have much left when FEAR Online launched... but it's all gone now.



UPDATE 2: Im currently hearing through the WB's community website that they will be trying a new patch in a few days. I would have liked to have heard this from the devs directly (on steam forums or WB, it doesn't matter), but the evidence seems to be a busy update on Steam's servers. This is good news as it suggests that Rocksteady is keeping fixing the game as their top priority and for that I can only commend them.

However, I can not say the same for WB themselves. They were the ones who made this promise when they suspended all sales of the PC version of the game, even as they are now pushing the "Batgirl" DLC. It's looking more like I was about as hard on this piece of shit publisher and that they only pulled sales out of desperation. But even if that proves 100% true, it still has a silver lining: the refund policy is already giving the power to demand quality in our games back to us... the gamers. And that is something we have waited a LONG time to get back.

UPDATE: I may have been a little hard on the guys... I cant forgive the dishonest bullshit, but they just offered another first to make up for it. It seems according to a new update, they are offering refunds on physical copies of the game... a game, I might add, locked to your Steam account. Not sure how that is going to work, but... if they can make good on this promise, it is a good first step to regaining the trust of every consumer fucked over by this.

I know how bold a statement I'm making and how stiff the competition is. After all they compete with "micro-transaction EVERYTHING because it makes mobile gamers feel more welcome" EA, "Release cut-back games despite showing the features at E3 and still being on the disc in the name of parity" Ubisoft, "Pay for our DLC even though it's not really DLC, but content on the disc already that you are just unlocking" Capcom, and even "Fuck you all, slot-machines is where it's at!" Konami. But WB may have out-scummed the scummiest of players in the AAA game, because at least these assholes were all honest with us about what they were doing.


That is not to say WB has been faultless before now. Far from. In fact, they first drew my attention for being a little shitty when they told Rocksteady to stop fixing game-ending bugs for Batman: Arkham Origins so they can make DLC to sell for the same game. This kind of bullshit showed a complete disregard for their customers that should have put up red flags on their own of what was to come.

The next time I would see WB in my radar, it was with the need to vomit, as they would release F.E.A.R. Online, in essence taking everything the FEAR franchise has done, and sell it off cheap as a generic F2P shooter from a Korean studio, complete with slow-loading assets, glitches, and reducing all the "scaryness" to occasionally flashing Alma's face across the screen. This was such a blatant attempt to make money on the cheap with microtransactions it was barely palpable and the only thing WB did right with this game is remove it from Steam earlier this year. If you think I'm kidding, have a look at the reviews on Youtube.

And then we can get to Mortal Kombat X, in which WB decided they wanted to try stream-installation without actually building it on the PC. As a result, the game basically downloaded to PC the bare-minimum game to run and DLC for all the "pieces" that never installed, resulting in characters, levels, and modes missing for many gamers, crashing the game outright. To this day, the game has not yet been completely fixed.

And finaly, WB would show themselves to be utter shit just a few days ago with their release of the much anticipated Batman: Arkham Knight. Do not get me wrong, the game is getting rave reviews from everyone actually playing. However, that only makes this anti-consumer behavior all the more tragic. Basically, the PC version of the game came out a broken mess with the Steam forums and even the storepage reviews talking about getting descent performance out of the game being more about luck then your PC's specs. To release a game in this status is terrible to start, but there is proof in the behavior of the publisher that they saw this bullshit coming, making it far worse and a new low I have yet to see till now.

Specifically, this game had it's requirements increased dramatically 2 hours before it launched. Let me make that perfectly clear. 2 hours before the game unlocked, WB saw fit to reveal more intense system requirements, effectively LYING to anyone who pre-ordered the game, even so much as the day before.

But we are not done with the dishonesty there. Have you ever heard of a DRM called Denuvo? I had not until I looked into this game, but that is more then excusable, as it was only confirmed for 4 other titles, but it is a DRM known to eat up about 5-10% of the CPU power available to a game, and it's been confirmed to exist in this title. To say that this could be a large part of the issues being seen by so many gamers is likely understating things. But what makes that dishonest? Have another look at the steam store page. Do you see a note that there is 3rd party DRM in this game? No? Funny, because Steam requires this now... oh, that's right, they don't call it DRM. They call it "Tamper resistance" instead. That would be lie number two.

So what does this say to me? Personally, if a company is willing to pull this kind of bullshit against any part of their audience, they showed how much they can be trusted. Take that for what you will, because we all have to. All I know for certain right now is I'm glad I didn't buy this game and I hope anyone having issues of any kind take advantage of Steam's new refund policy. This is the kind of bullshit it was made for, and I can only hope WB eats every returned copy.

Sources:

• Steam: Batman Arkham Knight store page
• Steam: Batman Arkham Knight Community Announcement: System Requirements
• Steam: Batman Arkham Knight Discussions
• WCCFTech: Batman Arkham Knight - Denuvo DRM Could be the Culprit Behind the Performance Issues on the PC