I have said on many occasions that I believe the PC is today’s premiere gaming platform. A proper gaming PC’s versatility and performance are unmatched in the gaming world. Current-gen consoles from Microsoft and Sony were a major advance, but a good gaming PC can typically run games at higher resolutions, with higher frame rates, with more eye-candy, and you’ve got the ability to use a wide variety of input devices too. There are many other benefits as well, including relatively cheap games and a plethora of mods for some titles, but you get the gist of my position.

Although the PC has numerous technical advantages over consoles, game developers often neglect the PC versions of their games in favor of their console counterparts. Time again we’ve seen games come out for consoles and the PC simultaneously, only to find the PC version is gimped in some way. The most recent, glaring example is Batman: Arkham Knight. Developed by Rocksteady Studios and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Batman: Arkham Knight is the fourth release in the popular franchise. It was a highly anticipated title and was released just a few days back—only to be pulled from the market a short time later.

Batman: Arkham Knight not only had ridiculous arbitrary limitations built in (like a 30 frame per second cap), but numerous bugs that caused graphical anomalies, lag, crashes, and an overall sub-par experience. And it’s not just a few particular hardware configurations that suffered from the issues. The problems were widespread and so bad that the game has since been pulled from the market so it can be polished before re-release.

Needless to say, this situation is a darn shame. We just took a look at Batman: Arkham Knight and the game has many redeeming qualities. The graphics are gorgeous, gameplay is familiar to fans of the series yet more refined, and although the story is somewhat linear, the it does a good job of keeping the player engaged, for the most part.

With a high-profile title, especially one linked to such an iconic character as Batman, it was paramount to get every version right, for consoles and PCs. The fact that Rocksteady allowed a third-party to do the console port and then didn’t properly qualify the PC version of the game (in my opinion, based on all its problems) before release is exactly what’s wrong with PC gaming. Developers not putting in the proper effort to ensure a good end-product, or just not caring enough to produce a quality title, hurts everyone involved. Rocksteady and WB will undoubtedly deal with fallout from this release for ages. Gamers that sprung for the title before it was pulled are angry, and will most likely question future purchases of not only Rocksteady titles, but Batman titles as well. And you can bet DC Comics is none too happy right now.

I understand the economics force most game developers to focus on the console versions of their games, but that doesn’t mean the PC version should be substandard. If a game developer is going to put their name on a title and go after such a savvy audience as PC gamers, it’s paramount that they do it right from the get go. Every game is going to have some bugs out of the gate—they’re just too complex to get everything perfect on day one. But PC gamers can forgive minor annoyances that can be fixed with a small patch or a driver update. Releasing a game that’s so bad that it has to be pulled from the market is a different story and shouldn’t happen.