There's a very long and detailed article about the behind-the-scenes development of Batman: Arkham Knight and the rocky development of the PC version of the game. Some of the sources who claim to have worked QA state that Warner Bros knew about the problems with the PC version all along but prioritized the PS4 and Xbox One over the PC.
Kotaku did a long-form write-up on the quality assurance process of Batman: Arkham Knight for PC. Some of the sources they contacted – sources who wished to remain anonymous so they can still get work within the gaming industry – made it known that Warner Bros was made aware of the frame-rate issues and glitches of the PC version.
According to the article, one source explained to them that the eighth-gen consoles were the priority because they were harder to optimize for than the studios anticipated. This led to a lot of the problems discovered for PC to get put on the back burner...
We reported literally thousands of bugs that were specific to the PC version relating to the frame rate, [...] All sorts of fucked up texture issues. The Batmobile in particular has always fucked things up on PC.We had some testers bugging more than 100 bugs per day. Devs would fix what they could but they were juggling that with actually finishing the game so they were insanely slow. Only when the game was done and no new features had to be built could they actually buckle down. Once that happens they also restrict what you can or can’t bug, to ensure that they can catch up.
One of the article's sources claimed that the PC version was capped at 720p for the testing and optimization of Arkham Knight. This would explain why Warner Bros' suggestions for increasing performance of the PC version had gamers to lower the resolution to 720p. This is despite the minimum requirements for AMD users to have a card with 3GB of VRAM.
However, according to the sources this wasn't all about Rocksteady and the third-party group at Iron Galaxy Studios simply being neglectful. Part of this was due to Rocksteady and Warner Bros trying desperately to keep leaks from occurring with the story. It's one of those things that happens with a lot of games and it's understandable that they would want to keep certain story elements from being leaked ahead of release. However, this created the problem where only pockets of the game were tested at a time instead of the whole game, or so that's how the story goes from one of the QA testers who worked on Batman: Arkham Knight.
The delays for the game are explained away as relating to the game not working right or well on consoles for the longest. Hence, Iron Galaxy Studios was contracted to port the PC version while Rocksteady optimized Arkham Knight for home consoles.
One of the sources told Kotaku...
A lot of these ‘port houses’ tend to over-promise and under-bid to get the job. I think the way port-houses work is a pretty under-exposed part of the industry. They do the dirty work for AAA studios, sometimes with the goal of funding their own original game. A lot of times, they can really struggle to break out.
For now, Warner Bros is left with the hot potato as they attempt to fix, optimize and patch Batman: Arkham Knight on PC. The game, at the time of the writing of this article, is still unavailable for purchase for PC after it was pulled. Warner Bros did recently release a patch for the game to address some of the optimization issues but they still have a long ways to go.
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