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Warner suspends Batman: Arkham Knight PC sales

UPDATE: Rocksteady has "best engineers working like crazy" on this.

UPDATE 26TH JUNE 9AM BST: Batman: Arkham Knight creator Rocksteady has pledged its best engineers to the job of fixing the PC version, as one would hope. The PC version of Arkham Knight was - optimised might be the wrong word - tailored by Iron Galaxy.

"Totally supported decision to suspend PC version," Rocksteady co-founder and Batman: Arkham Knight game director Sefton Hill tweeted. "We have our best engineers at Rocksteady working like crazy to help fix the issues ASAP."

Nevertheless, the game remains suspended from sale and the issues unresolved.

UPDATE 25TH JUNE 12.00PM BST: Graphics card maker Nvidia is being rather nice and working with Warner to resolve Batman: Arkham Knight issues on PC.

"We are working with WB Games and the development teams to address the performance issues of the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight," a spokesperson told us. "We have made our QA and engineering resources available and will provide updates when they are available."

These are not Nvidia graphics card-specific issues, the spokesperson added, but PC-specific issues.

UPDATE 25TH JUNE 11.30AM BST: GAME employees have confirmed to Eurogamer that the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight is now being pulled from shop shelves.

We enquired whether we could still buy a copy of the game even in full knowledge that the game had bugs, and was told that the chain had last night been ordered by publisher Warner Bros. to immediately stop selling PC copies.

"We have the stock," one GAME employee said, "but I'm not allowed to sell it to you".

ORIGINAL STORY 25TH JUNE 8.55AM BST: Warner Bros. has suspended sales of Batman: Arkham Knight on PC while performance issues are addressed.

"We want to apologise to those of you who are experiencing performance issues with Batman: Arkham Knight on PC," a statement on the game's forum (via NeoGAF) read.

"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."

Warner said you can request a refund through Steam for the game "if desired", or through the shop you bought the game from. Warner said the Batman and Steam forums are being monitored, as are the issues logged with the customer support team.

"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 statement closed.

Batman: Arkham Knight launched on Tuesday and issues with the PC version of the game were quickly noticed. Chief among them were the game being inexplicably locked at 30 frames-per-second. But that wasn't the end of its problems, as our Digital Foundry analysis discovered.

The problem stems from the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight not being developed by Rocksteady but by an external studio. Batman: Arkham Knight game director Sefton Hill named Iron Galaxy as that studio on Twitter.

The story is very different on console, particularly on PS4, where the game technically impresses.

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