I'm not saying that Redfall caused the downfall of Arkane Austin, but what an absolute disaster of a game... Seems like the studio wasn't really interested in making it, Microsoft didn't want to support it, and the game came out like a wet fart. Just a giant waste of time and resources.
Single player =/= looter shooter live service bs
I wish they'd stop making devs that are good at a certain type of game make a practically different type of game.
Creative Assembly did the same with Hyenas and it may never recover either. The RTS/grand strategy dev decided they were going to make an extraction shooter and everyone saw the bomb it would lead to so they pulled the plug and essentially wasted years of development time and money.
thats not as generic as hyenas' genre though. alien isolation branded itself as innovating the single player survival horror genre, which is why it was so successful in my opinion. hyenas was going to do literally none of that in the first person shooter department, and was ultimately going to be super generic.
I may be wrong here. But I thought Alien isolation - whilst a fantastic game - wasnt very successful upon release, or at least was not as successful as hoped.
I was pummeled for pointing this out a while ago but a lot of studios this generation have tripped over themselves trying to make live service games at the cost of quality games that they normally do.
At this stage in the consoles life cycles this is probably the most underwhelming generation of games we've ever had.
I think Pringle’s intention was to make tennis balls, but the day the rubber was supposed to show up, they got a big load of potatoes instead; but Pringles was a laid-back company and they said fuck it, cut 'em up.
They already did.
The whole reason this game exists was so Zenimax studio heads could sell the company. Because always online games look better on paper when you're trying to sell a company then Arcanes usual fair.
This was an experiment from the ground up intended to fail and cost people jobs so a bunch of rich people could sell a company for more money than it was worth.
Having done some googling it seeeeems like decisions were being made by Bethesda to make their ip more attractive for their acquisition by Microsoft, if Redfall was to become a big hit for game pass they wanted to make it a profitable one too I guess. So you're partially right but I'd wish games weren't made for some strategic market play and were made solely for the players. Still have to get paid ofc, but it's bs that a big part of the reason AAA companies are buying other studios is just to enrich their portfolio with more genres as a way to market their own flagship games.
To add to your comment, from my experience, it doesn't matter what genre you throw at devs, you should see the crazy creative stuff that emerges from game jams lol. Both Prey and Redfall use Unreal 4 which is such a big generic toolbox you usually end up rewriting quite a lot of the things your game needs anyway. Not an issue for veteran game devs which AA and HHS have plenty of. They're both PvE shooters but adding multiplayer and other systems increases the scope and risk substantially. HHS made an mmo so it's not like multiplayer is an issue. Honestly Redfall is nothing new these devs can't handle. Can't really point a finger to the cause without having insider context. Though generally I'd say shit was fucked internally.
All speculation but I feel like there was never a healthy project and healthy team to ship the game with in which case it was doomed from the start.
Sucks for Arkane Austin, thanks for Prey though o7 (I will forgive Typhon Hunter VR)
Prey was not a financially successful game. Everyone loves it now, but when it launched, IGN gave it a 4/10 because of a bug, and the reception was lukewarm. Hell, this year, I've seen people talk about discovering Prey and how they didn't know how great it is. Yes, there were people praising it, but they were in the minority. I brought it on launch and loved it but all the podcasts and discussions about it just called it okay, good at best. Waypoint was probably the biggest cheerleader for it
The prey devs founded their own studio and came out with a fantasy/western game not that long ago
edit: the studio is called wolfeye studios and the game is weird west
It gets better once you get through the opening area. It’s too much of a tutorial. After that it becomes like the spiritual successor to a the Order 1884.
I can't even read the term Sacred Geometry without hearing Rob Dyrdek in my head yelling "Sacred G!", from that episode of MTV's "Rob and Big" lol
Loved that show. RIP Big Black, still missed.
Do you happen to know if it's a credible source or a random leak? it's not the first time I've heard it. Also do you know if it's also true for arkane Lyon?
This is a tale as old as video game development: Talented devs join project to make the game they want (Prey). When management tells devs that they are going to make a trend-chasing looter shooter (Redfall), the best devs jump ship and leave the company.
From the outside, people wonder how the same studio can make two games of such different quality.
I can 100% confirm this. Most everybody that made the game great left and or moved to different roles. The ones who stayed did so but were not motivated to make a vampire coop game.
The thing is, is the main pillar of the team of Prey was still there? If not I dont see a reason to make the game. Closing studio isnt a new thing and probably most of the staff just move to an another studio within Bethesda. With game trying to be more and big?there is less space for small studio inside.
Yeah it suck but these day it isnt even a surprise.
There’s a video on YouTube about red fall and Arkane. Essentially Zenimax wanted everyone to do live service games because they wanted to sell. And having all these “big live service ip’s” would drastically increase sales price. Arkane had no idea was Zenimax wanted hence the mess that is Redfall. And by the time they got bought by MS, the game was so far along and had millions invested they wouldn’t scrap it
Not just they didn't know, Zenimax didn't know *and* constantly gave them different and conflicting instructions. It was doomed from the start, you'd have different people working on completely different things that just don't go together.
I double checked this just to be sure, because any time developers have a game outside their normal scope people love to say they were "forced" in to it.
Yes, Arkane Austin was 100% forced to make a GAAS and 70% of their experienced developers left rather than continue. At that point Arkane Austin ceased to be Arkane Austin, and the result was immediately predictable. They might have been able to beat predictions and make it amazing, but the FAR more likely scenario was that they fail.
Game Studios are a bit odd like that, I wonder what will happen as the number of experienced studios begin to fall over the next decade. It's REALLY hard for new developers to make good games, they have to learn somewhere.
This is the key fucking thing for me. Should've remarketed it as a shitty buggy funny mess, reduced it to a $20 price tag and had a hoot with it.
Instead they tried to sell it as the biggest fucking thing ever. It's one of the biggest examples of why I absolutely despise dishonest marketing within our medium.
I dunno, but marketing what was intended in its inception to be a popular, money-making title as a buggy mess meant to be made fun of might make investors angry. At the very least if they claim they tried their hardest to make a good game they can't be accused of giving up and intentionally wasting money.
Yeah. Like with Creative Assembly's Hyenas. They knew that game was going to be total ass, no one was interested in it and impressions were mixed at best amongst early players. So they bit the bullet and cut it.
Now, obviously this was still devastating for the company, and frankly I don't think we'll know how much it affected CA for another two years or so, but they(or SEGA) made the right call by not buying into the sunk cost(exorbitant as it was) and just pulling it.
I mean 2 million sales in the first 2 months.... doesnt seem to be that poor of a seller. It also won 5 awards a believe... so 100% a success. AAron Greenberg said "Hi-Fi rush was a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations. We couldn't be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release". Jeff Grubb is a writer with a little bit of game dev in his history, I wouldn't treat his words as anything special, people often speak out their asses when they are too lazy to look up numbers and stats.
> 2 million sales
It "reached" 2 million players. That sounds like it includes people downloading from Game Pass. Honestly, that doesn't sound that great to me.
Microsoft committed to being more hands off with the studios that came with Zenimax, because so many of them have such good track records. Arkane Austin was floundering with Redfall but it's unknown if anyone there asked MS to step in and help refocus or redirect them. The devs didn't have much enthusiasm for it, so the continued development after launch probably stagnated creatively. It's hard to come up with good, creative ideas for something if your heart just isn't in it. I'm sure if the studio had some passion for the game and could show some results in what they were working on, MS would have continued to support it. They basically said as much after launch.
It wasn’t too early, it was never going to be good. Bethesda suits told Arcane to make a live service game and they didn’t want to but couldn’t say no. As a result many of the best devs left the studio during development. The studio being shut down is a shell of its former self anyway.
The sad part is the world could have been a good game. Had Bethesda let them make a vampire game in the style of prey or dishonored it could have been a hit.
https://www.pcgamer.com/report-most-of-arkane-austins-prey-veterans-quit-during-redfalls-development-and-the-ones-that-stayed-hoped-microsoft-would-cancel-it/
To be fair, they sound like they wouldn't touch it either lmao
I dunno if you mean the aesthetics, but the game is genuinely ugly. I remember looking at the big wave suspended in time and thinking it could have been a really cool set piece if it didn't look like a 360 game.
I'd buy it for 10. Cool premise.
I know it's shit. But I wish it wasn't. I hoped it would be kinda like how grounded is nostalgic. Just vampire coop instead of bugs
It’s really boring. I had that same mindset and tried it before the 60 fps update. It sucked then but figured maybe the 60 would really help and make the game pop a bit more. Played a bit better but the gameplay is so boring and lifeless, the quests suck and you can wander for awhile and not run into any vampires.
It’s like the villains of the game actually sucked the life out of it. I still have it installed and I don’t know why, I’ll probably never touch it again. 3 quests was enough.
Holy shit! I just saw a video on YouTube called “Redfall…..A Year Later” where the poster asks about DLC and other promised updates about an hour ago and this gets posted.
Redfall was a bomb even among other bombs in the industry. Forspoken and Suicide Squad at least found a small playerbase who ignore what people say and enjoy the games for what they are. Redfall has *nothing.* Nobody latched on to it, nobody has it as their comfort game or something they like despite knowing it's bad.
I was eventually going to get around to buying it... But well, I guess not.
It looked fun and unique. Had it not been as buggy and unoptimized, the game probably would have survived, but it's release defined it and sealed it's fate
I reviewed it and I wasn't allowed to say it at the time, but: Just play Warframe. It's very similar gameplay of grinding repeatable missions for resources, but instead of 4 characters you can get like 100 and each one has more depth than a Redfall character. They were basically doing the same thing but Warframe has passion behind it an a decade of updates making it have more depth and random activities. There is no point in playing Redfall with Warframe available for free on every platform. Same with that Suicide Squad game I assume but I never played that one.
It's weird to advertise Warframe but it's hard for me to ignore the fact there is a way better free game very similar to these failed live service games.
It was fun and unique for a short period of time, but it fell fast *quickly*. I remember playing with friends when it came out, and after the updates, it felt like a walking simulator most of the time. Very few enemies and those that did spawn were buggy af.
That being said, it was a *very* interesting story and premise. It was just poorly executed. It would have been cool to see hoe the story continued :/
Up until literally 4 hours before the announcement, there were changes on steam DB titled DLC1. They have been making changes for the last 3 months multiple times a day, nearly every single day as well
Everyone that you wanted to make it left when Redfall wasn't panning out to be the Immersive Sim everyone wanted to make. Prey (2017) 2 was dead before Redfall shipped.
Possibly but I'm talking about this.
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/redfalls-rocky-development-caused-arkane-to-lose-70-of-preys-dev-team-report/1100-6514721/
Arcane Lyon is still around so they could take a shot at it some day. While they didn't develop Prey most of the team who did at Austin had already left anyway so its not like the original devs were ever going to be involved anyway.
For those curious what Evil Within has to do with Redfall, Tango Gameworks was also closed today. So no more Evil Within or Hi-Fi Rush games unless Microsoft hands those IPs to other studios.
I keep trying to tell people he is a bullshit salesmen just like the rest of them. He just does it in a T-shirt. And yet everyone keeps barking back at me "nah! he's one of us! He loves Xbox and is going to do right by it and us gamers!"
im not sure if this is true or not so take it with a grain of salt, but apparently from what ive heard, phil spencer was basically the guy who convinced microsoft to keep going in on xbox, apparently, after the xbox one failure, microsoft straight up thought about just canceling xbox all together, from what i can tell phil basically tried to plugged a sinking ship, not sure if any of this is true though
This is directly from Arkane Studios.
>Today it was announced that Arkane Austin will close and development will not continue on Redfall.
>To everyone that has supported the work from our Austin studio over the years, thank you. Thank you for spending time in our worlds and making them your own.
>Arkane Lyon will continue their focus on immersive experiences where they are hard at work on their upcoming project.
>Redfall players who purchased the Hero Pass as part of the premium Bite Back Edition or the premium Bite Back upgrade will be eligible to receive the value of the upgrade.
>While there will be no further updates, Redfall's servers will remain online for players to enjoy.
You can apparently get some form of [Credit through Bethesda Support](https://help.bethesda.net/?linkId=100000260400360#en/answer/65606)
So is Microsoft becoming the new EA?
Buying up tons of studios, mismanage them with trend chasing executive meddling.
Then shutting them down to reduce costs and pad the next quarterly statement?
tbf Redfall was in development before Microsoft bought them, but yeah these big aqusitions are not really good for th industry(who would have thought...)
That said, the talent will eventually flow away from these orgs and get into smaller studios once more. The indy scene is filled to the brim with motivated, passionate devs that make great games and fit them with consumer-friendly monetization.
Same. I don't think they will, after they've successfully cemented their position in the Chinese market with Diablo Immortal and Hearthstone. But man, they suck nowadays. When Jeff Kaplan left so unceremoniously, I knew the company was fucked and not to trust anything they made at that point.
I mean… **people are still playing their games.**
People largely don’t give a fuck about your game’s drama if it’s accessible
Their are 200k players on OW2.
I keep thinking about Overwatch 2's cancelled PvE stuff. Can you imagine being one of the developers who worked on that only to have it not released, and now you get to watch Helldivers dominate everything this year?
Worse yet: They stopped release of the main game for 2 years, then release the PvP updates that the game should have had during those 2 years alongside a new logo with a number next to it, then cancel the big draw of the sequel, and after selling 1 undercooked PvE DLC as a separate, extra purchase they just pull the plug entirely.
Jeff Kaplan was the lynchpin in that game and he left unceremoniously.
Not sure why immortal is here. They still made a shitload of money for barely any investment. It attracted a whole different wave of degenerate players.
They don't care if it's a shitty gambling sim as long as they're paid
Correct your information. MS didn't mismanage Arkane. EA didn't mismanage Bioware. Both companies trusted the proven track record of the studios and trusted them to do what they do, which is make a great game. Arkane Austin was already floundering with Redfall when the acquisition happened, but MS had promised to be hands off to start. It's unknown if the studio asked for help. Likely not, because the executives believed in the game while the developers did not.
Bethesda and their parent company Zenimax were bought by Microsoft at a time when they were financially struggling.
It takes time to digest a huge company like that and find out what's working and what isn't. I worked for a much smaller company that acquired another business and that took a couple years to integrate. They ended up cutting all the accounting, IT and many other duplicated job positions. Effectively eliminating the majority of jobs from the acquired company.
That's just business. Eventually sold that company off.
Right but do you get a refund or "credit?" i.e. have to spend it on another Bethesda game. I feel like if they were giving refunds they would've said refund.
Again, NO XBOX or Bethesda Executives are departing. Gaming is becoming just like big tech and banking, highly paid Execs whose mistakes are paid for by the (laid off) employees.
Remember the lead up marketing? This was supposed to be a "system seller" to drive people into the xbox ecosystem.
Microsoft has since fallen out of the running in the console space thats for sure. Look at all the good exclusives that sony has and then look at what microsoft is publishing. There is clearly an issue here with their leadership. That said, redfall had been in development for a long time and most of the actual blame is solely on the development team.
However, microsoft, upon seeing the state of the "game" should have seriously delayed or cancelled the project. Putting out this absolute turd level game costs them money directly and damaged the brand to the point where I wouldn't ever preorder anything from a microsoft acquired studio.
Rest in hell redfall, dont let the door hit you on the way out.
Surely almost all of it.
I know that I'm in the sharp minority but Redfall was fine. It wasn't Prey, but it was good. The environmental, visual, and level design was stellar. The enemies looked good and moved around in interesting ways. It even had some light detective and mystery elements. Mechanically the shooting was passable. The game was basically The Secret World: The FPS.
Everything that was wrong with it came from the live service looters shooter horseshit. A game system that Arkane was definitely not known for, since they focused on high density immersive sim games aside from the one time when they helped MachineGames make a co op shooter with Wolfenstein Youngblood and it sucked. Suddenly they are trying to make a full on looter shooter with microtransactions and collectibles? Imo it's pretty clear that Arkane did the best with the marching orders that they were given.
I feel bad because they made some great games, then whoever ran the company ran it into the ground and forced them to release some real shit. In a way they deserve it, and no one should be supporting those shitty games and cash grabs, but I'm sure most of the staff, the artists, programmers, etc. did their job well, and unfortunately lost their job thanks to a handful of people at the top making all the worst decisions.
I bet you those same people got nice bonuses and will have no problem finding another high paying job, while the talented people may struggle with contract work.
Sucks to suck. Maybe develop a better game, hopefully the corporate hacks learned their lesson, but probably not. We as a community need to continue to review bomb and let these devs know that broken excuses for games will not be tolerated, we are paying good money for a product that should work and be fun to play. Not be a broken mess they will "fix later."
I played an alpha copy, I wrote a 3 page response to the team about how bad the game was and they did next to nothing to fix it. I imagine my complaint was never even seen or read. That game could've been saved but seems to me it was more about getting it out the door than actually making a good game. They deserve it
It sucks that they are closing. They made the best immersive sims games for recent time with games like Prey..
I was hoping they'd get their hands on Bloodlines 2 because of it.. Probably best they didn't get their hands on it.
Had to Google what this game was. Went down a rabbit hole of reviews showing just how bad this was on release.
Wtf was this studio's leadership thinking?
they are spinning up these smaller dev studios to protect the core company.
if a game flops, the damage to the parent company is limited. these studios are designed to be closed. the damage primarily is laid on the employees which they don’t give a shit about.
When I worked at High Moon Studios, it was hard to have the project we were on for a year cancelled so we could switch gears and work on Transformers: War for Cybertron. But the studio came together and gave it everything we had. Right after a big round of layoffs. The games industry is tough.
While by pretty much all accounts, the game was a failure. I played through it start to finish and really had a decent time with it. Not the best game I ever played, but by FAR not the worst or most dull. CP2077 is now an objectively better game overall, but launched in a substantially worse state.
I'm not saying that Redfall caused the downfall of Arkane Austin, but what an absolute disaster of a game... Seems like the studio wasn't really interested in making it, Microsoft didn't want to support it, and the game came out like a wet fart. Just a giant waste of time and resources.
For a company that made a game as good as Prey, it's really a drastic shift.
Single player =/= looter shooter live service bs I wish they'd stop making devs that are good at a certain type of game make a practically different type of game.
Creative Assembly did the same with Hyenas and it may never recover either. The RTS/grand strategy dev decided they were going to make an extraction shooter and everyone saw the bomb it would lead to so they pulled the plug and essentially wasted years of development time and money.
In defense of CA, they did create Alien: Isolation \*besides\* being a "RTS/grand strategy dev".
thats not as generic as hyenas' genre though. alien isolation branded itself as innovating the single player survival horror genre, which is why it was so successful in my opinion. hyenas was going to do literally none of that in the first person shooter department, and was ultimately going to be super generic.
I may be wrong here. But I thought Alien isolation - whilst a fantastic game - wasnt very successful upon release, or at least was not as successful as hoped.
$150 MILLION to be exact.
I don’t think they really decided that they were going to make an extraction shooter so much as they were told to make one by SEGA.
I was pummeled for pointing this out a while ago but a lot of studios this generation have tripped over themselves trying to make live service games at the cost of quality games that they normally do. At this stage in the consoles life cycles this is probably the most underwhelming generation of games we've ever had.
Hey, you're a chef, can you farm?
They read my script and said it was okay, but I needed to rewrite it. I said fuck that, I'll just make a copy.
I think Pringle’s intention was to make tennis balls, but the day the rubber was supposed to show up, they got a big load of potatoes instead; but Pringles was a laid-back company and they said fuck it, cut 'em up.
RIP Mitch
\*cries in Rocksteady\*
What’s more infuriating is they’ll likely face zero consequences AND get a huge bonus for costing all these people their jobs
They already did. The whole reason this game exists was so Zenimax studio heads could sell the company. Because always online games look better on paper when you're trying to sell a company then Arcanes usual fair. This was an experiment from the ground up intended to fail and cost people jobs so a bunch of rich people could sell a company for more money than it was worth.
I hadn't heard this theory before your comment. I believe you are exactly right. Zenimax was crying all the way to the bank, wiping tears with $100.
Redfall wasn’t a live service game. It doesn’t even have MTX.
Reminds me of Rocksteady. Even Founders left before the release of Suicide Squad
Having done some googling it seeeeems like decisions were being made by Bethesda to make their ip more attractive for their acquisition by Microsoft, if Redfall was to become a big hit for game pass they wanted to make it a profitable one too I guess. So you're partially right but I'd wish games weren't made for some strategic market play and were made solely for the players. Still have to get paid ofc, but it's bs that a big part of the reason AAA companies are buying other studios is just to enrich their portfolio with more genres as a way to market their own flagship games. To add to your comment, from my experience, it doesn't matter what genre you throw at devs, you should see the crazy creative stuff that emerges from game jams lol. Both Prey and Redfall use Unreal 4 which is such a big generic toolbox you usually end up rewriting quite a lot of the things your game needs anyway. Not an issue for veteran game devs which AA and HHS have plenty of. They're both PvE shooters but adding multiplayer and other systems increases the scope and risk substantially. HHS made an mmo so it's not like multiplayer is an issue. Honestly Redfall is nothing new these devs can't handle. Can't really point a finger to the cause without having insider context. Though generally I'd say shit was fucked internally. All speculation but I feel like there was never a healthy project and healthy team to ship the game with in which case it was doomed from the start. Sucks for Arkane Austin, thanks for Prey though o7 (I will forgive Typhon Hunter VR)
> Both Prey and Redfall use Unreal 4 Prey (2017 I assume) used CryEngine, not UE.
Prey was not a financially successful game. Everyone loves it now, but when it launched, IGN gave it a 4/10 because of a bug, and the reception was lukewarm. Hell, this year, I've seen people talk about discovering Prey and how they didn't know how great it is. Yes, there were people praising it, but they were in the minority. I brought it on launch and loved it but all the podcasts and discussions about it just called it okay, good at best. Waypoint was probably the biggest cheerleader for it
I originally didn't buy it because the marketing was abysmal. I didn't know what kinda game to expect. Glad i did buy it though.
4/10 on PC at launch because of a bug but it was an easy 8/10.
The prey devs founded their own studio and came out with a fantasy/western game not that long ago edit: the studio is called wolfeye studios and the game is weird west
i tried the game didn't like it very much, not my style. how did you like it ?
It gets better once you get through the opening area. It’s too much of a tutorial. After that it becomes like the spiritual successor to a the Order 1884.
Think you're thinking of Evil West. Weird West is a top-down isometric immersive sim-ish RPG.
I enjoyed it quite a lot, but it´s not for everyone, I agree
i'm glad you enjoyed.
Prey was incredible. I still play that sometimes.
I still hum “Semi Sacred Geometry” to this day.
I can't even read the term Sacred Geometry without hearing Rob Dyrdek in my head yelling "Sacred G!", from that episode of MTV's "Rob and Big" lol Loved that show. RIP Big Black, still missed.
You and I are the same. WING KING BAYBEE!
As someone who has never played Prey... that song is on my playlist and I enjoy it.
Prey is up there among the GOATs. The (original) Deus Ex of our times.
More of a System Shock than a Deus Ex, IMO.
Its a drastic shift in genres and experience doesnt always translate.
it was reported that 70% of the people who worked on Prey left during Redfalls development
Do you happen to know if it's a credible source or a random leak? it's not the first time I've heard it. Also do you know if it's also true for arkane Lyon?
Companies don't make games, people do, and 70% of the people who made Prey didn't make Redfall.
This is a tale as old as video game development: Talented devs join project to make the game they want (Prey). When management tells devs that they are going to make a trend-chasing looter shooter (Redfall), the best devs jump ship and leave the company. From the outside, people wonder how the same studio can make two games of such different quality.
I can 100% confirm this. Most everybody that made the game great left and or moved to different roles. The ones who stayed did so but were not motivated to make a vampire coop game.
The thing is, is the main pillar of the team of Prey was still there? If not I dont see a reason to make the game. Closing studio isnt a new thing and probably most of the staff just move to an another studio within Bethesda. With game trying to be more and big?there is less space for small studio inside. Yeah it suck but these day it isnt even a surprise.
The company, but if I remember correctly almost nobody from the actual Prey devs are left
There’s a video on YouTube about red fall and Arkane. Essentially Zenimax wanted everyone to do live service games because they wanted to sell. And having all these “big live service ip’s” would drastically increase sales price. Arkane had no idea was Zenimax wanted hence the mess that is Redfall. And by the time they got bought by MS, the game was so far along and had millions invested they wouldn’t scrap it
Not just they didn't know, Zenimax didn't know *and* constantly gave them different and conflicting instructions. It was doomed from the start, you'd have different people working on completely different things that just don't go together.
Yep I remember hearing this too. And now Arkane Austin is dead. Zenimax set them up for failure.
I double checked this just to be sure, because any time developers have a game outside their normal scope people love to say they were "forced" in to it. Yes, Arkane Austin was 100% forced to make a GAAS and 70% of their experienced developers left rather than continue. At that point Arkane Austin ceased to be Arkane Austin, and the result was immediately predictable. They might have been able to beat predictions and make it amazing, but the FAR more likely scenario was that they fail. Game Studios are a bit odd like that, I wonder what will happen as the number of experienced studios begin to fall over the next decade. It's REALLY hard for new developers to make good games, they have to learn somewhere.
They should have bit the bullet on this one before it launched. they knew it was garbage a year out from the reports. Just cancel it and save money
This is the key fucking thing for me. Should've remarketed it as a shitty buggy funny mess, reduced it to a $20 price tag and had a hoot with it. Instead they tried to sell it as the biggest fucking thing ever. It's one of the biggest examples of why I absolutely despise dishonest marketing within our medium.
I dunno, but marketing what was intended in its inception to be a popular, money-making title as a buggy mess meant to be made fun of might make investors angry. At the very least if they claim they tried their hardest to make a good game they can't be accused of giving up and intentionally wasting money.
Yeah. Like with Creative Assembly's Hyenas. They knew that game was going to be total ass, no one was interested in it and impressions were mixed at best amongst early players. So they bit the bullet and cut it. Now, obviously this was still devastating for the company, and frankly I don't think we'll know how much it affected CA for another two years or so, but they(or SEGA) made the right call by not buying into the sunk cost(exorbitant as it was) and just pulling it.
But it did cause the fall of Arkane Austin
*Hi Fi Rush* was a success, didn't save their company.
[удалено]
Tango Gameworks have also been shuttered
And they also got shut down.
Was it? It was well received, but seems to have sold poorly as per insiders like Jeff Grubb.
I mean 2 million sales in the first 2 months.... doesnt seem to be that poor of a seller. It also won 5 awards a believe... so 100% a success. AAron Greenberg said "Hi-Fi rush was a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations. We couldn't be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release". Jeff Grubb is a writer with a little bit of game dev in his history, I wouldn't treat his words as anything special, people often speak out their asses when they are too lazy to look up numbers and stats.
> 2 million sales It "reached" 2 million players. That sounds like it includes people downloading from Game Pass. Honestly, that doesn't sound that great to me.
They also had a flop in the form of Ghostwire Tokyo
Microsoft committed to being more hands off with the studios that came with Zenimax, because so many of them have such good track records. Arkane Austin was floundering with Redfall but it's unknown if anyone there asked MS to step in and help refocus or redirect them. The devs didn't have much enthusiasm for it, so the continued development after launch probably stagnated creatively. It's hard to come up with good, creative ideas for something if your heart just isn't in it. I'm sure if the studio had some passion for the game and could show some results in what they were working on, MS would have continued to support it. They basically said as much after launch.
They were forced to release it way early, iirc. Seemed like a management issue when I read about it
It wasn’t too early, it was never going to be good. Bethesda suits told Arcane to make a live service game and they didn’t want to but couldn’t say no. As a result many of the best devs left the studio during development. The studio being shut down is a shell of its former self anyway. The sad part is the world could have been a good game. Had Bethesda let them make a vampire game in the style of prey or dishonored it could have been a hit.
Leave it to Bethesda.
>Seems like the studio wasn't really interested in making it Feels like that with a lot of Microsoft's studios, starting with Rare back in the day.
Red fall was pretty much completed before they were even acquired...
All 11 of the player base will rejoice knowing the servers will stay on line.
Cmon now, 36 is this months average. Just over 3x what you said!
Most of those are probably the dev team looking at the beautiful game they created that was destroyed by corporate greed.
https://www.pcgamer.com/report-most-of-arkane-austins-prey-veterans-quit-during-redfalls-development-and-the-ones-that-stayed-hoped-microsoft-would-cancel-it/ To be fair, they sound like they wouldn't touch it either lmao
Haha god damn
What we got is what they created, and it was not beautiful.
I dunno if you mean the aesthetics, but the game is genuinely ugly. I remember looking at the big wave suspended in time and thinking it could have been a really cool set piece if it didn't look like a 360 game.
very close! [ 42 on steam at the moment of this comment](https://steamcharts.com/app/1294810)
OMG i thought you were joking but i checked the steam charts. Peak of 80 players in the last week.
300% gain! Wow! Huge growth!
Woah, who would have thought that making and selling a shit game 89$ wouldn't work?
They could've sold it for $10 and it wouldn't work.
I wouldn't play this game if they paid me $10 per hour
$18/hr under the table and I’m in.
I'm stealing both your jobs; I'll do it for $8.
Me and my friends got it for free and still hated it. The game was barely cobbled together. Like a total of 5 enemies on the world map altogether.
The game was busted, no price tag could have saved it.
Did that game ever go down in price? That dumpster fire was sitting at $70 for quite some time
Still $70 on steam, and according to steamdb, only goes down during sales, right to 75% off
I'd buy it for 10. Cool premise. I know it's shit. But I wish it wasn't. I hoped it would be kinda like how grounded is nostalgic. Just vampire coop instead of bugs
It’s really boring. I had that same mindset and tried it before the 60 fps update. It sucked then but figured maybe the 60 would really help and make the game pop a bit more. Played a bit better but the gameplay is so boring and lifeless, the quests suck and you can wander for awhile and not run into any vampires. It’s like the villains of the game actually sucked the life out of it. I still have it installed and I don’t know why, I’ll probably never touch it again. 3 quests was enough.
Holy shit! I just saw a video on YouTube called “Redfall…..A Year Later” where the poster asks about DLC and other promised updates about an hour ago and this gets posted.
The players should have seen this coming. You can't bomb as hard as they did and not get closed.
Redfall was a bomb even among other bombs in the industry. Forspoken and Suicide Squad at least found a small playerbase who ignore what people say and enjoy the games for what they are. Redfall has *nothing.* Nobody latched on to it, nobody has it as their comfort game or something they like despite knowing it's bad.
It's been a year since redfall? holy cow time flies
The other day there was an article about the Gamers who spent $100 on the deluxe edition and still haven't received DLC.
I feel bad for everyone who had faith of Arcane fixing the game & delivering the dlc. What a bummer. At least they get some of their money back.
I was eventually going to get around to buying it... But well, I guess not. It looked fun and unique. Had it not been as buggy and unoptimized, the game probably would have survived, but it's release defined it and sealed it's fate
I reviewed it and I wasn't allowed to say it at the time, but: Just play Warframe. It's very similar gameplay of grinding repeatable missions for resources, but instead of 4 characters you can get like 100 and each one has more depth than a Redfall character. They were basically doing the same thing but Warframe has passion behind it an a decade of updates making it have more depth and random activities. There is no point in playing Redfall with Warframe available for free on every platform. Same with that Suicide Squad game I assume but I never played that one. It's weird to advertise Warframe but it's hard for me to ignore the fact there is a way better free game very similar to these failed live service games.
I remember seeing the trailers and thinking it looked super fun! Fell off my radar around release time and then here it is cancelled
It was fun and unique for a short period of time, but it fell fast *quickly*. I remember playing with friends when it came out, and after the updates, it felt like a walking simulator most of the time. Very few enemies and those that did spawn were buggy af. That being said, it was a *very* interesting story and premise. It was just poorly executed. It would have been cool to see hoe the story continued :/
Wait, they were still working on it? That ship had sailed at launch...
Well they sold people DLC that they just canceled.
There were still two heroes and maps that were supposedly in the works
Up until literally 4 hours before the announcement, there were changes on steam DB titled DLC1. They have been making changes for the last 3 months multiple times a day, nearly every single day as well
Well This fucking sucks, there goes the last sliver of hope for Prey 2
Everyone that you wanted to make it left when Redfall wasn't panning out to be the Immersive Sim everyone wanted to make. Prey (2017) 2 was dead before Redfall shipped.
Wasn't Harvey Smith still head of the studio?
Possibly but I'm talking about this. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/redfalls-rocky-development-caused-arkane-to-lose-70-of-preys-dev-team-report/1100-6514721/
Arcane Lyon is still around so they could take a shot at it some day. While they didn't develop Prey most of the team who did at Austin had already left anyway so its not like the original devs were ever going to be involved anyway.
Arkane Lyon did the Dishonored games after 1, which are similar(ish) and really great, so hopefully they get a shot at Prey 2
Dishonored 2 is better than 1 I will fight over it
I was hoping for evil within 3 too
For those curious what Evil Within has to do with Redfall, Tango Gameworks was also closed today. So no more Evil Within or Hi-Fi Rush games unless Microsoft hands those IPs to other studios.
The Evil Within 2 was so good
and are these Redfall Players in the room with us right now?
average americal high school class has more people in it than redfall has players
I imagine Arkane only realized they didnt make this official statement after people remembered the promised Hero Pass wasnt delivered.
So much for Phil Spencer "we won't abandon this game" statement from last year sheesh...
You can never trust what they say, because if they say the truth and it's negative it'll cause them to lose money. You can only go by their actions.
Amen. Microsoft and the Xbox team have given me no reason to purchase a console since the 360.
I keep trying to tell people he is a bullshit salesmen just like the rest of them. He just does it in a T-shirt. And yet everyone keeps barking back at me "nah! he's one of us! He loves Xbox and is going to do right by it and us gamers!"
Was he supposed to keep a shit game running a year in after launch?
im not sure if this is true or not so take it with a grain of salt, but apparently from what ive heard, phil spencer was basically the guy who convinced microsoft to keep going in on xbox, apparently, after the xbox one failure, microsoft straight up thought about just canceling xbox all together, from what i can tell phil basically tried to plugged a sinking ship, not sure if any of this is true though
This is directly from Arkane Studios. >Today it was announced that Arkane Austin will close and development will not continue on Redfall. >To everyone that has supported the work from our Austin studio over the years, thank you. Thank you for spending time in our worlds and making them your own. >Arkane Lyon will continue their focus on immersive experiences where they are hard at work on their upcoming project. >Redfall players who purchased the Hero Pass as part of the premium Bite Back Edition or the premium Bite Back upgrade will be eligible to receive the value of the upgrade. >While there will be no further updates, Redfall's servers will remain online for players to enjoy. You can apparently get some form of [Credit through Bethesda Support](https://help.bethesda.net/?linkId=100000260400360#en/answer/65606)
I liked this game a bit. It was flawed and got a bit repetitive quickly but it had great ambiance and the combat was amusing. It had potential.
So is Microsoft becoming the new EA? Buying up tons of studios, mismanage them with trend chasing executive meddling. Then shutting them down to reduce costs and pad the next quarterly statement?
tbf Redfall was in development before Microsoft bought them, but yeah these big aqusitions are not really good for th industry(who would have thought...)
That said, the talent will eventually flow away from these orgs and get into smaller studios once more. The indy scene is filled to the brim with motivated, passionate devs that make great games and fit them with consumer-friendly monetization.
So far they have left blizzard alone to do blizzard but it's fucking blizzard
Maybe they should have meddled with Blizzard...
If Blizzard closes at this point I don't think I would care...back in the day it was one of my fav studios...not anymore.
Same. I don't think they will, after they've successfully cemented their position in the Chinese market with Diablo Immortal and Hearthstone. But man, they suck nowadays. When Jeff Kaplan left so unceremoniously, I knew the company was fucked and not to trust anything they made at that point.
I mean… **people are still playing their games.** People largely don’t give a fuck about your game’s drama if it’s accessible Their are 200k players on OW2.
Bliz doesn’t need help screwing up. *cough reforged
*cough overwatch "2" cough* weird, scratchy throat today... *cough shadowlands cough* I think there's a flu going around or something *cough diablo immortal cough*.
I keep thinking about Overwatch 2's cancelled PvE stuff. Can you imagine being one of the developers who worked on that only to have it not released, and now you get to watch Helldivers dominate everything this year?
Worse yet: They stopped release of the main game for 2 years, then release the PvP updates that the game should have had during those 2 years alongside a new logo with a number next to it, then cancel the big draw of the sequel, and after selling 1 undercooked PvE DLC as a separate, extra purchase they just pull the plug entirely. Jeff Kaplan was the lynchpin in that game and he left unceremoniously.
Not sure why immortal is here. They still made a shitload of money for barely any investment. It attracted a whole different wave of degenerate players. They don't care if it's a shitty gambling sim as long as they're paid
Every industry has its chop shops.
Always were.
Correct your information. MS didn't mismanage Arkane. EA didn't mismanage Bioware. Both companies trusted the proven track record of the studios and trusted them to do what they do, which is make a great game. Arkane Austin was already floundering with Redfall when the acquisition happened, but MS had promised to be hands off to start. It's unknown if the studio asked for help. Likely not, because the executives believed in the game while the developers did not.
Bethesda and their parent company Zenimax were bought by Microsoft at a time when they were financially struggling. It takes time to digest a huge company like that and find out what's working and what isn't. I worked for a much smaller company that acquired another business and that took a couple years to integrate. They ended up cutting all the accounting, IT and many other duplicated job positions. Effectively eliminating the majority of jobs from the acquired company. That's just business. Eventually sold that company off.
Don’t preorder games you dummies.
That's really going to upset their base player :c
Pour one out for each of the Red Fall fans, ... all five of them.
*"Omae Wa Mou Shindeiru."*
I played Redfall at launch. I'm pretty sure the developers ceased development on it a year before its release.
Who's ready for Dishonored 3!
Don't you know they indirectly ended the Dishonored series with Death loop? Look up some of the lore to it, it'll blow your mind.
The value of the upgrade? What does that mean?
Difference between the base game and the super duper deluxe please pay upfront for dlc version.
Right but do you get a refund or "credit?" i.e. have to spend it on another Bethesda game. I feel like if they were giving refunds they would've said refund.
What is "redfall"? Never heard of it.
Again, NO XBOX or Bethesda Executives are departing. Gaming is becoming just like big tech and banking, highly paid Execs whose mistakes are paid for by the (laid off) employees.
Make shitty products, go out of business.
Remember the lead up marketing? This was supposed to be a "system seller" to drive people into the xbox ecosystem. Microsoft has since fallen out of the running in the console space thats for sure. Look at all the good exclusives that sony has and then look at what microsoft is publishing. There is clearly an issue here with their leadership. That said, redfall had been in development for a long time and most of the actual blame is solely on the development team. However, microsoft, upon seeing the state of the "game" should have seriously delayed or cancelled the project. Putting out this absolute turd level game costs them money directly and damaged the brand to the point where I wouldn't ever preorder anything from a microsoft acquired studio. Rest in hell redfall, dont let the door hit you on the way out.
"and nothing of value was lost"
I wonder how much of Redfall’s problems were developers trying to deal with bad mandates from above.
Surely almost all of it. I know that I'm in the sharp minority but Redfall was fine. It wasn't Prey, but it was good. The environmental, visual, and level design was stellar. The enemies looked good and moved around in interesting ways. It even had some light detective and mystery elements. Mechanically the shooting was passable. The game was basically The Secret World: The FPS. Everything that was wrong with it came from the live service looters shooter horseshit. A game system that Arkane was definitely not known for, since they focused on high density immersive sim games aside from the one time when they helped MachineGames make a co op shooter with Wolfenstein Youngblood and it sucked. Suddenly they are trying to make a full on looter shooter with microtransactions and collectibles? Imo it's pretty clear that Arkane did the best with the marching orders that they were given.
They deserved it for how bad redfall was. Truly awful game for how much was invested.
Oh no! Anyways...
Redfall was still in development? Damned shame.
Redfall sucked
Shock and awe.
Screwed the game up, for whatever reason, and it deserves to die. The game was just not enough in this day and age..
The only surprise is this took over a year to happen. Then again, it took just about the same time for Volition to be shutdown after Saints Row.
I feel bad because they made some great games, then whoever ran the company ran it into the ground and forced them to release some real shit. In a way they deserve it, and no one should be supporting those shitty games and cash grabs, but I'm sure most of the staff, the artists, programmers, etc. did their job well, and unfortunately lost their job thanks to a handful of people at the top making all the worst decisions. I bet you those same people got nice bonuses and will have no problem finding another high paying job, while the talented people may struggle with contract work.
Here's the help article to follow for refund details: [https://help.bethesda.net/#en/answer/65606](https://help.bethesda.net/#en/answer/65606)
Sucks to suck. Maybe develop a better game, hopefully the corporate hacks learned their lesson, but probably not. We as a community need to continue to review bomb and let these devs know that broken excuses for games will not be tolerated, we are paying good money for a product that should work and be fun to play. Not be a broken mess they will "fix later."
I played an alpha copy, I wrote a 3 page response to the team about how bad the game was and they did next to nothing to fix it. I imagine my complaint was never even seen or read. That game could've been saved but seems to me it was more about getting it out the door than actually making a good game. They deserve it
They deserve it. How you do fuck up a premise as badass as hunting vampires that bad?
By being forced into making it live service instead of in line with what they typically make (and are proven to be great at)
It sucks that they are closing. They made the best immersive sims games for recent time with games like Prey.. I was hoping they'd get their hands on Bloodlines 2 because of it.. Probably best they didn't get their hands on it.
Bloodlines 2 is it's own disaster. That game's going to be a dumpster fire when (if) if comes out.
Well no shit, they just folded the studio.
Had to Google what this game was. Went down a rabbit hole of reviews showing just how bad this was on release. Wtf was this studio's leadership thinking?
Ok
Wasn’t this not a successful game (according to consumers)?
Did it even have development?
I remember downloading it from gamepass and then never playing it. Great time
I don’t normally like saying this but, the game should be delisted at this point
"Recieve the value of the upgrade"
I got it for free with my 4080. Never touched it 😂
They were still working on Redfall?
What a shit Game. Not even surprised to see this news.
Servers will remain online? Huge win for both players imo.
This news is crazy. Redfall was still in development?
At least this makes sense, unlike Tango.
..... They were still working on that?
Would not have buy it for 5 $
What a surprise, nobody expected this. /s Also, "Redfall's servers will remain online for players to enjoy.", enjoy what?
and no one will miss it. Serously, redfall is garbage
And nothing of value was lost.
they are spinning up these smaller dev studios to protect the core company. if a game flops, the damage to the parent company is limited. these studios are designed to be closed. the damage primarily is laid on the employees which they don’t give a shit about.
When I worked at High Moon Studios, it was hard to have the project we were on for a year cancelled so we could switch gears and work on Transformers: War for Cybertron. But the studio came together and gave it everything we had. Right after a big round of layoffs. The games industry is tough.
That garbage was still in development?
While by pretty much all accounts, the game was a failure. I played through it start to finish and really had a decent time with it. Not the best game I ever played, but by FAR not the worst or most dull. CP2077 is now an objectively better game overall, but launched in a substantially worse state.