Home

 › 

Articles

 › 

Stop Hiring People on Kijiji to Code Your PC Ports

Stop Hiring People on Kijiji to Code Your PC Ports

Bad ports. They aren’t just a PC problem. Everybody, console or PC gamer, has picked up a game at some point that was obviously not given the love and care that was lavished on its lead console version. Just ask Wii U owners, who are so used to shoddy ports that many just don’t bother with multiplatform releases anymore (third parties who claim their games don’t sell on Nintendo consoles have themselves at least partly to blame). The bad port issue has been a long-time gripe for PC gamers, though, and we’re rather tired of getting knock-off versions of AAA titles handled by third-party companies.

The latest entry in the bad PC port hall of shame is Batman: Arkham Knight . This bad PC port didn’t even bother to have the usual issues of a wonky interface or memory and framerate issues inherited from console limitations. No, it was straight-up unplayable for a bunch of gamers, particularly those with AMD cards. Look, PC porters. There are only two major brands of graphics card. Couldn’t you be sure to optimize your game for both?

When these bad ports of AAA titles keep piling up, PC gamers get frustrated. It’s nearly always a third party company that was hired to do these ports too. It makes us wonder – where did they find these companies?  Kijiji?  CheapCodersRUs.com?  Granted, it’s not always the fault of the third party company. Arkham Knight ‘s porters at Iron Galaxy have successfully ported several PC games in the past, so maybe WB cheaped out by failing to provide a proper timeframe or QA support to this “third party partner.” It appears that only twelve people worked on the port, so perhaps WB simply didn’t pay Iron Galaxy enough to provide the proper resources to the project.

In fact, the buck always stops with the publisher in the end. If you want to put out a solid, working PC title, you need to give it solid financial support and work closely with whoever is doing the port. Ideally, you’d do the port in-house. It’s not like most big publishers don’t have programmers who could be working on the port instead of given temporary layoffs when their work on a game’s lead platform version is done. At the very least, don’t outsource your port to a company that has a reputation for turning out shoddy PC ports, like Capcom did with Mortal Kombat X for PC.

Stop Hiring People on Kijiji to Code Your PC Ports

As I noted when I argued that PC gaming won E3 2015 , PC gaming is a force to be reckoned with again. The number crunchers say that the PC hardware market is over twice the size of the console market, and it’s been over a year since the PC software market overtook consoles . This isn’t a case like the Wii U, where the market is small, causing companies to cheap out because they have limited possible profits to make anyway. We’re talking about popular AAA franchises here, which PC gamers will buy the sh*t out of as long as they work properly, and especially if a bit of care is taken to allow us to play the game with the maximum smoothness and prettiness settings that our monster rigs allow.

Making good PC ports isn’t a matter of placating a small community of overclocking enthusiasts anymore. PC gaming is a massive market, one that it’s time to treat with respect. Properly funding PC ports isn’t just good for PC gamers, it’s good for a company’s bottom line. Publishers, it’s time to stop trawling Kijiji for bargain basement PC ports and give your PC version the funding and care that it deserves. Especially with Steam’s reviews section and its new refund policy, you have your own reputation and your bottom line at stake.

Image credits: Sad Batman Memer, www.broken-keyboard.com

To top