The PC release of Warner Brothers'/Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham Knight has been, well, rocky — and that's putting it as politely as possible. While it's not altogether uncommon for PC ports of major console releases to be bug-ridden messes, Arkham Knight was so bad that Warner Brothers eventually opted to stop selling it on Steam altogether.
But Steam users — at least the ones who hadn't opted for a refund upon discovering the state of the game — were able to briefly try a beta patch for the game today. If they had chosen to participate in betas, an approximately 600 MB patch appeared today that some users say has resulted in massive performance improvements and a whole slate of new PC-specific video options.
Not everyone experienced the same level of performance, and before long, Warner Brothers had released a second patch that effectively eliminated the first and, some users reported, made the game perform even worse.
Some users on the Steam forums have posted purported workarounds — ways you can download and install the initial patch despite it having been yanked, but in the interest of security we won't post links to these solutions until we can independently verify they're safe to use.
This major patch was promised to have dropped in August but was delayed until some time in September — you'd probably be wise until Warner Brothers has decided to release a finished version anyway. Hopefully, the appearance of the beta patch today, albeit briefly, is a sign that you won't have to wait much longer for a version of the game that more resembles something "finished."
