Warner Bros Games Montreal has started a firestorm of sorts, announcing they are not releasing any more patches for Batman Arkham Origins in lieu of upcoming story DLC. Community manager Mercury stated that they will not fix game issues with future patches, unless said issues impede game progress. For the moment, they are busy making said DLC.
Earlier in the month, the same studio canceled that DLC for Wii U owners of that game. Of course, Season Pass owners were screwed out of their purchase. Nintendo did credit the paid amount back into Wii U owners’ eShop accounts, so at least they received some form of repayment. Still, Wii U fan or not, anyone should have recognized then that Warner Montreal’s decisions were often not to the benefit of consumers. In that sense, this revelation should have been no surprise.
Could it be an understaffing problem? As of October last year, Warner Montreal claimed to have around 325 employees, and adding 100 more jobs, as part of an initiative by the Quebec government, which also funded them at the onset.
It may also be of interest to know that Warner Montreal’s prior console outings, Batman Arkham Origins and Batman Arkham City: Armored Edition, received mixed reviews, and were unfavorably compared to previous outings for their many glitches and general lack of polish.
Warner Montreal may be a relatively new studio, but the hand of Ubisoft veterans like Martin Carrier and Martin Reid Schneider should be steering them in a better direction than this. Canada has become the home of many fine game studios, such as Next Level Games, Rockstar Toronto, and Ubisoft Montreal, but Warner Montreal is hurting that reputation with these decisions.
