An announcement by Gotham Knights developer WB Games Montreal on Twitter has confirmed that the game has gone gold and is on its way to the manufacturing stage. After a year-long delay from the initial planned release, Gotham Knights appears to be on track for the expected release date in October 2022.Gotham Knights was first announced to a crowd of over 20 million viewers back in 2020 during the DC FanDome virtual event hosted by DC Comics and Warner Bros. Entertainment. Although Gotham Knights is developed by WB Games Montreal, the team behind Batman: Arkham Origins of the acclaimed Batman: Arkham franchise, Gotham Knights takes place in its own world separate from the Batman: Arkham series. Despite this departure, players can still expect a variety of familiar heroes and villains such as Mr. Freeze and Penguin. Batman is dead, leaving players to take on the roles of Batman family members Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood, and the new Robin as they carry on the crime-fighting legacy of the caped crusader.RELATED: Gotham Knights Confirms Red Hood Trailer Release DateMany people have heard the phrase "going gold" through the music industry, which indicates a record having sold 500,000 copies, but the term has a different meaning in gaming. When a game announces it's gone gold, its development is considered finished and ready for publication and printing. Before the modern era of digital distribution, completed games were burned to a writeable "master" CD-ROM, which usually had a gold appearance. This golden master would then be the basis for duplication and sale, similar to master records in music. Although less common today, console games that are still available on disc media may follow this practice. Digital-only games may still announce they have "gone gold" when it's time to send the game off to digital storefronts like Steam.

The announcement that Gotham Knights has gone gold means that the game will most likely hit its October release date target, although that doesn't necessarily mean work is over for WB Games Montreal. The time period between a game going gold and its release date is often reserved for work on the day one patch, an increasingly common occurrence in today's industry where developers are faced with difficult crunch times and workload demands that make it very challenging to reach deadlines. Many modern games end up with day one patches followed by a series of updates and DLC, often accompanied by players taking it upon themselves to develop community patch mods to fix issues.

The recent Batman: Arkham games played a major role in bringing interest to titles bearing the DC Comics license, and many players are likely looking forward to revisiting Gotham to fight crime once again. Hopefully, players and the citizens of Gotham alike can manage to get by without the presence of Batman this time around.

Gotham Knights is set to release on October 25, 2022, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.

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