UPDATED 12:00 EDT / AUGUST 05 2015

NEWS

Warner Bros’ game revenue proves awful PC ports don’t hurt profits

Despite releasing one of the worst PC versions of a game in recent memory, Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment saw game revenues spike by 135 percent for Q2 thanks primarily to Mortal Kombat X and Batman: Arkham Knight, proving that maybe Warner Bros is right to not care about PC gamers.

“Warner Bros.’ games business also shined with releases of Batman: Arkham Knight and Mortal Kombat X helping make it the top videogame publisher for the first half of the year,” Time Warner Inc Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bewkes said in an earnings release.

While Batman: Arkham Knight may be a top earner for Warner Bros, there is currently no clear indication on when the PC version will be fixed to the point that it can return to digital store shelves. It has been well over a month now since the publisher was forced to remove the game from services like Steam due to the atrocious nature of the PC version, which suffered from severe graphical problems and other bugs.

A leaked email from EB Games obtained by Kotaku Australia in July suggested that the game may be coming for a Fall 2015 re-release, but there are still no solid details other than a planned “interim patch” coming out sometime this month.

With game revenue up more than double, it is hard to imagine that Warner Bros feels any urgency to address the PC issues with Arkham Knight, but VP of Game Technology Gary Lake-Schaal wrote an update to the game’s Steam page in July, saying that fixing the game was the publisher’s highest priority.

“Addressing the PC performance issues is still our top priority and at this time, we believe we have identified a number of fixes for the larger issues that were affecting PC players at launch,” Lake-Schaal wrote. “These fixes are currently being implemented into the game and once we have been able to do some initial testing, we’ll have a better idea on the status of our progress. We’ll provide an update on how things are developing next week.”

For reference, it has been nearly one month since Lake-Schaal wrote those words, and there is still no end in sight for PC gamers waiting for a stable version of the game.

But hey, at least Warner Bros is still raking in the money, right guys?

Image credit: Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment

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