Redfall’s disastrous reception hasn’t put devs Arkane Austin at risk of closure (yet, anyway)
No boot from Booty for now.
It’s fair to say that Arkane’s vampire-slaying co-op game Redfall was… not well received when it released back in early May.
Our own Ed wrote that the open-world FPS feat. bloodsuckers in need of a blastin’ felt “drained of Arkane’s magic”, writing in our review: “Flashes of Arkane's brilliance make an appearance, but they are a rare find amidst a bland, incoherent world that clearly points to deeper issues in a game that's been drained of its magic.”
Ed’s verdict that Redfall felt like “a live service game that already feels like it's been abandoned” was far from alone, if the game’s 53 Metacritic rating on PC, abysmal 2.1 user score and Mostly Negative on Steam are anything to go by.
Since then, the game’s been patched to try and remedy some of those deeper issues - ranging from poor AI and an empty world to flat-out bugs - in an attempt to try and make enemy encounters both more frequent and more interesting (and less broken to boot), amidst apologies from its devs and promises for future fixes.
Given the dire state of Redfall - with under 100 people playing at any one time on Steam in the last day - it might understandably make some folks concerned about the impact one of 2023’s biggest flops so far might have on the future of developers Arkane Austin.
Fortunately, for now, there’s no reason to worry - at least, according to Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty, who told Axios that the studio wasn’t at risk of closure. At least, not immediately anyway.
“That is the plan right now,” Booty replied when asked if Arkane Austin would remain open despite the game’s reception. “They are hard at work on updates and continued content for Redfall.”
The Xbox chief went on to admit that Microsoft could’ve helped to set better expectations around the game ahead of its release, acknowledging: “I feel accountable that we could have done a better job with Arkane.”
On the brighter side, Booty said that Redfall is seeing “good play” via Xbox Game Pass, and is apparently optimistic about eventually making good on the promise of an open-world vampire-hunting game from the beloved makers of Prey.
“It was a miss, but how much of a miss?” he said. “I want to support them to be able to keep working to deliver the game they had in mind.”