Now that WB Games and Netherrealm Studio’s upcoming title, Injustice 2, has been announced I suppose it’s only fair to get this out of the way. Yes, the title has been officially announced, which was a forced early announcement thanks to all of the leaks, of which I’m sure didn’t make WB Games happy at all. But speaking of happy, I could only help but notice that the title was only announced for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. I’m sure it will also make it’s way over to iOS and Android as another swipe to play or card game as well.
However, what I didn’t see was an announcement for Injustice 2 on the PC. And to be perfectly honest, I didn’t expect one and nor should have you. If you were, I’m sorry but it just ain’t happening and here’s why. Back in 2015, WB Games had released another fighter called Mortal Kombat X for the consoles and PC. And upon its release gamers complained about technical problems such as the game crashing, memory leaks and certain parts of the game not loading because it simply wasn’t available. On top of all that, Netherrealm didn’t even acknowledge the actual problems until much later. It’s also worth noting that Netherrealms themselves were not responsible for the port and instead was overseeing it as WB Games had hired High Voltage to port the title and the very same team that ported over Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition. I’ll add that Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition was a decent port on the PC and sold fairly well.
Eventually, a 15GB (Yes, it was that big) patch was released and was promised to fix the glaring glitches. However, upon release, it merely caused more problems. A release title with game breaking issues such as memory leaks, high input lag which made online unplayable, caused a large number of gamers to abandon Mortal Kombat X. That list of problems didn’t bode well for Mortal Kombat X, as well get to in just a bit.
For a complete list of headaches that were encountered, see here.
Ah yes, the infamous video where Youtuber, Angry Joe, interviews Ed Boon, who flat out claims that the PC release of Mortal Kombat X was going to be amazing. And it was, amazingly bad.
The launch and status of Mortal Kombat X echoed similar launch of the original Injustice on PC. That title suffered from instances such as the game running slow, crashes upon start and when it finally did run it was stuck at the loading screen, controls default back during online play and disconnection issues. Thankfully all of that was ironed out a bit faster than those of Mortal Kombat X. But what happened with Mortal Kombat X? It was handled by the very same team that handled the Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition and yet it was a steaming pile of crap that just wasn’t given the attention it needed.
But then WB Games released Batman: Arkham Knight and to this day and remains a marking point on when WB Games turned its back on PC gaming community. As a PC gamer and a former fan of WB Games, Batman: Arkham Knight, is the biggest black eye in regards to completely screwing over a customer after they’ve purchased your product. Since its launch, Batman: Arkham Knight, has been riddled with problems that include poor and low frame rate, multiple issues with running on SLI / Crossfire setups and memory leaks, all of which forced WB Games to pull the title from both Steam and retail outlets. WB Games promised that they would correct the problems along with its partners, Iron Galaxy, and Nvidia, hoping to win over the PC gamers. Sadly, after many months and two patches, nothing really changed. Last I checked, I know they had put out another patch towards the end of 2015, however, anything planned for SLI or Crossfire support had been dropped.
“We’ve been working with our development and graphics driver partners over the last few months to investigate utilizing multi-GPU support within Batman: Arkham Knight. The result was that even the best case estimates for performance improvements turned out to be relatively small given the high risk of creating new issues for all players. As a result we’ve had to make the difficult decision to stop work on further multi-GPU support. We are disappointed that this was not practical and apologize to those who have been waiting for this feature.”
As an attempt of a goodwill gesture, they offered several copies of previous Batman titles to those who were affected, while Steam and other retailers such as Greenmangaming had started offering refunds for the title. However, if you were one of those gamers who picked up a new Nvidia GTX 970 or GTX 980, you were stuck with it. Nvidia eventually changed the title offered from Batman: Arkham Knight to Metal Gear Solid V and even helped some gamers get the later title. Not everyone was as fortunate, however.
Since this all happened it has been a downward spiral relationship between the PC gaming audience and WB Games, which extended back into Mortal Kombat X. WB Games announced that the Mortal Kombat XL, which and the Kombat Pack 2 were not coming to the PC. This came weeks after Netherrealm had been teasing the release of the Kombat Pack 2, only to release for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. When asked why the PC version was non-existent, WB Games pointed the finger towards developer, Netherrealm and claimed that Netherrealm had scrapped it to the poor performance and sales of Mortal Kombat X on PC. No more updates, no future content, nothing that the consoles would receive, despite having paid for the game.
@sh_aza777 Mortal Kombat XL and Kombat Pack 2 will available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One only.
— Mortal Kombat 1 (@MortalKombat) January 20, 2016
And before anyone attempts to point out that the game didn’t sell on the PC, it has been documented over and over that the PC version sold over 500,000 copies, with an additional 50,000 sold after that. Despite being completely broken, the PC community did attempt to support the game. The game would have likely sold more copies, had it not been put out to pasture. The tune of 500,000 in sales for a fighting game on the PC isn’t a small feat, considering that that genre is all but considered niche on the platform.
Now back to the present day, we’re still seeing the effects of the falling out. Injustice 2 not coming to the PC is a prime example of this. Instead of looking within their company and holding their developers responsible for the messes they’ve been having with getting proper PC ports out there, WB Games would rather punish the PC gaming audience. And for everyone saying, just get it on the consoles, I’ll simply say state that I disagree with you. If the PC is someone’s platform of choice they should not be penalized due to the incompetence of the management running WB Games. If you’re going to take the time and spend the money to get a game on the PC, then you should be also willing to stand by your choice and make it the best that it can be. That includes hiring a decent team to handle ports instead of hiring the lowest bidder. Surely, WB Games has seen that when they put out a good title, the community stands with them. Just look at the releases of Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Mad Max, countless LEGO games, The Witcher 3, and even Dying Light as an example. If the game is handled well, the PC gaming community will buy it and stand by it.
Sadly, I feel that Injustice 2 is just the tip of the Iceberg and definitely not a good sign of things to come. In fact, I’ll be surprised if we see another NEW game mentioned that will be published by WB Games that ends up making it to the PC, well, expect the LEGO titles. Am I upset that Injustice 2 isn’t coming to the PC? Not really, I expected it. What really upsets me is how WB Games has been treating the PC gaming market the past few years and ultimately throwing its hands up and blaming other reasons other than the one that they should be looking at and that is themselves.
Now, I’ve gone back and forth on this with my teammates, the people that would go to war with me and I’ve done my best to make them see why this is a big deal. My ending shot I pitched to them is the same one I’ll end this article with. I could understand if the last few games that were sold on the PC didn’t reach their sales expectations. But they did! When Ed Boon was asked about the sales of Mortal Kombat 9 (2012) which was released as Mortal Kombat Komplete Kollection on PC, 2 years later, he replied: “It sold way, way above expectations”.
@denis_fdrv WAY WAY above expectations.
— Ed Boon (@noobde) August 8, 2013
If that was the case, why handle Mortal Kombat X on PC so badly? Sure, it only sold 550,000 copies, but also in a broken state and then, well… killed.
That goes for the rest of WB titles for the PC. For the most part, just about every game has sold well, many above the 1 million mark. It’s not a matter of PC gamers not wanting to buy games from the WB Games camp. Quite the opposite in that they simply won’t buy crap, which is how it should be for anyone, on console or PC. Sadly, by simply excluding the PC gaming community from Injustice 2, sure it pushes the possibility of a bad port being produced off the table but at the same time, at least to me ti also says that WB Games hasn’t learned a thing and simply doesn’t care.
I suppose that is a good thing after all, isn’t it?
