It's well known that Batman: Arkham Knight had a few issues with its PC launch, and that caused Warner Brothers to actually remove the game from Steam at the time due to the consumer backlash. Despite some efforts to fix the issues in question, even after the game re-released on Steam, users were still indicating problems with the game in question. So much so that full refunds were offered to the end of the year. However, the Steam user rating stands at Mixed at this very moment with over 20000 reviews in total. Now a mixed rating on Steam is going to hurt business badly for a developer and publisher, and unfortunately, new information may suggest that Warner Brothers may be attempting to hide that information from the consumer base. And despite the fact that it's been released for a while, the game has popped up under the New Releases page on Steam.
As pointed out by Kotaku Australia, a new bundle has appeared on the steam store page, and it's contents are a little bit surprising. The bundle in question has Batman: Arkham Knight....and nothing else. To note in particular is the fact that the user rating does not show up in the bundle store page. This is most likely due to bundles having multiple products most of the time, and having different ratings. Here, however, with only one item in the bundle, seems to suggest that the bundle was created for the purpose of hiding the user rating. Now the price element of the page does come into question, as while the game shows an $89.99 price tag in the individual products section, the core game is actually $49.99, which is the bundle price tag. It implies that the game is on sale which it doesn't seem to be in terms of what the bundle is offering at this point. The Premium edition of the game is $89.99 however (that includes the Season Pass). And based on the Steam Database, the bundle does not include the Season Pass but includes a couple of cosmetic DLCs. Needless to say, the information presented is misleading, thinking that the consumer is getting a deal when they are in fact are getting anything but.
This isn't the first time that the bundle system has been used like this. Konami had a similar bundle with Pro Evolution Soccer 2016. That game at the time also had heavy criticism for the poor performance of the port as well, and the bundle was offered after the game got a Mixed rating on Steam.
In addition, another problem has popped up with Batman: Arkham Knight on the PC as well, a problem that was thought to be fixed. It has been recently re-discovered that reviews of players who owned the game before the recent patching of the game have had their Steam reviews marked as "Pre-Release Review". This issue was seen earlier in the year, and was fixed at the time. However, the pre-release review status is back, meaning that despite reviews being updated for recent events, users could believe that the review is not indicative of the game's current state.
TechRaptor has contacted Warner Brothers Interactive and asked about both the Steam Reviews as well as the bundle in question, and will update this story when they respond. We had also reached out regarding the pre-release reviews to Valve and Warner Brothers yesterday as well, but have not heard back at this time.
