It’s not been a good year for PC players, with Black Ops 3 following in Arkham Knight’s footsteps in being a completely broken mess. Like the Batman game, some players are reporting that all seems fine, but most people are experiencing extreme technical problems.
Common issues include the game crashing at the logo screen, failing to launch at all, unplayable framerate drops and other equally severe problems. The game also appears to be pushing computers to breaking point by maxing out CPU usage. Damningly, the PC version was not a port, but was developed in-house at Treyarch. The studio suggested on Steam that their paying customers try to fix the problem themselves by messing around with game files.
It’s becoming increasingly common for games to be broken or unfinished at launch, or in Batman’s case, never finished at all. Publishers already demand that players pre-order games and buy season passes, while simultaneously employing shady marketing practices, so massive technical problems like this will do nothing but continue to erode the trust of consumers.
Dean was a regular ICXM contributor between 2015–2017, publishing 39 articles across game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @SpookyWomble.