We thought that the woes for Batman: Arkham Knight ended last November, when the company once again offered refunds for the PC version. Now, another blow strikes the development team, as the game’s Mac and Linux versions are canceled.
The announcement was posted on the game’s Steam forums. Short and straight to the point, it read: “We are very sorry to confirm that Batman: Arkham Knight will no longer be coming to Mac and Linux. If you have pre-ordered Batman: Arkham Knight for Mac or Linux, please apply for a refund via Steam.”
This latest news seems to be the final chapter in the Arkham Knight fiasco. After a messy release in June, developers added features in small, “interim patches” to improve performance on the PC. When the game came out again in October, our own Derek Forrest ran a second wave of tests. However, he discovered that a few issues lingered from day one, and performance was worse than before, especially on higher resolutions.
In addition to more patches, WB Games issued a statement that told users it would try to fix certain problems, but there are a few issues that couldn’t be resolved. In other words, the developers and publisher admitted defeat in their pursuit of polishing the game on PC. If it can’t fix the PC version, it makes sense to abandon the Mac and Linux platforms altogether.
Batman: Arkham Knight signaled the end of the Batman: Arkham series, but it’s hard to focus on the gameplay when multiple performance issues stifled the experience. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Rocksteady Studios (hopefully) learned their lesson, so that the next project won’t be as catastrophic in its execution.
