GamesFPSRedfallRedfall’s devs were reportedly building out its massively delayed Hero Pass content ‘very recently’—before Microsoft closed Arkane Austin for goodWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesFPSRedfallRedfall’s devs were reportedly building out its massively delayed Hero Pass content ‘very recently’—before Microsoft closed Arkane Austin for goodWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)
In case you missed the news, yesterday Microsoft’s Xbox divisionannounced the closure of four studios—which included Arkane Austin (Prey, Dishonoured) as well as Tango Gameworks (Tokyo: Ghostwire, Hi-Fi Rush).
The news came as a shock to an industry still reeling fromthousands of layoffsin 2023 and 2024, seen as a cynical move that ran contrary to the vibe Microsoft wanted to give off with its acquisitions—more along the lines of Embracer’s disastrous spending spree that saw many studiossold off or shut down.
Hi-Fi Rush, in particular, seemed like a damning edict. You can make a solid game based on a fresh IP that creates a huge wave of excitement and, in Microsoft’s own words,exceeds expectations—only to have the world crumble around you less than two years later.
Arkane Austin, however, had almost the inverse problem—having produced a library of well-received work (Prey, Deathloop, Dishonoured) before Redfall’s major flop in May of 2023. The thing had amassively troubled development cycle. As my fellow PC Gamer writer Joshua Wolens wrote last year:
Despite that, it seemed there was a serious effort to try and make Redfall an underdog revival.Updates would follow, and while Redfall was a long way off from aCyberpunk 2.0 style ‘redemption’, stranger things have happened. According toIGN’s Wesley Yin-Poole, the dream itself didn’t die until the shutdown announcements yesterday.
“IGN was told that the now cancelled Hero Pass content, which was set to add two new characters to the vampire co-op shooter, was scheduled for release this Halloween.” The report states that this work was being done “very recently”, so it’s uncertain whether Arkane Austin’s developers were hard at work right up until the closure announcement or not.
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Considering the shock of surviving studioArkane Lyon’s Dinga Bakaba, who called the decision a “gut stab”, it doesn’t take a detective to say the whole thing was probably unexpected.
On the other hand, I think Arkane Austin deserved a chance to try.Maybe a massive overhaul to the game and its systems could’ve done something—anything—to raise it from the coffin it had landed in so unceremoniously. Even if Redfall was doomed, Arkane should’ve gotten to move to something else.
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