• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Microsoft Killed Arkane When They Were About To Update Redfall With An Offline Mode

Havoc2049

Member
This is one reason I don't like to bother with Live Service games. Not that this game was even appealing to begin with. I don't know why people are eager to play these games when you aren't even guaranteed you will even get to play over a year. Unfortunately, closing of Arkane doesn't surprise me, but it sucks to see more and more studios closing. Phil Spencer did a poor job managing Xbox. I wish more people saw that in the beginning of this generation instead of the cultlike praise.
I played and finished Redfall and I wouldn't call it a Live Service game at all. It was basically a single player campaign with a co-op mode. There was zero Service in Redfall. No new weapons, missions, map expansions, new Heroes, etc. Literally all we got was them fixing the enemy AI at the beginning of the game because some of the baddies wouldn't react to low level characters and just stay frozen in the air and a 60 FPS patch. That's it. A map expansion, with new mission types and weapons, along with two new heroes should have been released LAST Halloween. Then we would of had a Live Service game and maybe a redemption arc for Redfall. Honestly, it's kinda amazing Arkane Austin has stayed open this long.
 

Fake

Member
Why take so long to put an offline mode?

Is this a legacy mode or something? Should be at day fucking one.
 
Last edited:
I hate bullshit threads like this. Now we'll get Redfall trolls saying this patch would have been the patch that would change their mind about the game
Redfall was such a mess that one could see the team we beyond saving. The game plays a lot better but the AI is a joke a utter joke and that's what killed the game for me more than it being multi player or co-op

Tango Works mind, Xbox deserve all the shit they're getting...
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
The game was shit and should have never been released. It should have been cancelled.

also, MS should never have bought the studio.
 

Ozriel

M$FT
Even the Avengers devs managed to get out the promised extra content. Arkane Austin couldn’t get out pre-paid expansion content and you think they had a major update imminent?

If making the game playable offline was a priority, they would have gotten it out earlier.
 

xrnzaaas

Member
It's probably the last chance to play this game assuming you have ANY interest in experiencing it. Microsoft won't keep the servers for too long for the last 5 players to enjoy them... and I don't think modders will be very interested in preserving this turd through unofficial servers.

It is possible that Arkane Austin just lacks competent people to keep supporting their "gaas game" post-launch, but I think it's more likely they've been moved to other projects and probably only a skeleton crew kept patching Redfall.
 

Barakov

Gold Member

So Arkane Austin was about to release an update that would have given Redfall an offline mode, something that they said a year ago they were working on.
And Microsoft won't even allow them to do that.

What do all the people who were calling Microsoft pro-consumer the last few years, all the people who said they would buy games on xbox because Microsoft "is the safest place to build a digital library because they care so much" think about this?

Get in here and tell us about how they're oh so pro-consumer and how they're the only ones who care about our digital gaming libraries.
Pondering Season 9 GIF by The Office
 

Matt_Fox

Member
We've recently done a home renovation and the weekly cash burn with 5 tradesmen on site is enough to make you lose sleep...

...I cant imagine the insane amount of $$$$$ it cost to keep Arkane Austin up and running per week.

For those thinking they should have given them a few more weeks to patch a poorly-received game that didn't have a playerbase, it's throwing good money after bad.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
We've recently done a home renovation and the weekly cash burn with 5 tradesmen on site is enough to make you lose sleep...

...I cant imagine the insane amount of $$$$$ it cost to keep Arkane Austin up and running per week.

For those thinking they should have given them a few more weeks to patch a poorly-received game that didn't have a playerbase, it's throwing good money after bad.
Without anger, but save it for the next time people gloat about MS money war chest, cheer for them to buy another publishers, and fantasise about MS funding all sorts of niche games and bringing glory to dormant great IPs and how GamePass is sustainable and great for all devs please.

Poor $3 Trillion corp beating revenue targets and making massive profits… poor them…
 

SJRB

Gold Member
Nobody blames Microsoft for pulling the plug on Redfall.

If it weren't for the studio closure no one would bat an eye. That game is an unredeemable disaster and offline mode wouldn't bring the playerbase back.
 
What happened at that studio to go from Prey, which was critically well received, running on Cryengine, an engine very few devs mastered (is there even a dev, other than Crytek, that had reasonable success with it?), to Redfall with the more commonly used Unreal, where every mediocre dev should be able to do something with. Probably also helped here and there with other projects but these two games were all they did, right? Started out strong, but not really commercially successfull, only to trip soonish after. Did they lose people after Prey anyway or after the acquisition important people left to avoid MS?
 

FunkMiller

Gold Member
What happened at that studio to go from Prey, which was critically well received, running on Cryengine, an engine very few devs mastered (is there even a dev, other than Crytek, that had reasonable success with it?), to Redfall with the more commonly used Unreal, where every mediocre dev should be able to do something with. Probably also helped here and there with other projects but these two games were all they did, right? Started out strong, but not really commercially successfull, only to trip soonish after. Did they lose people after Prey anyway or after the acquisition important people left to avoid MS?

Same thing that happened at Rocksteady.
 

BlackTron

Gold Member
They have non of the identity of the 360 days. They're basically just a shitty PC now. They could drop out tomorrow and the games industry would be just fine. It would probably be better off.

Too late to save the industry from substantial damage I'm afraid but it's never too late to cut losses.
 
Same thing that happened at Rocksteady.
Prey and Redfall seems to share Ricardo Bare as the main writer, and Harvey Smith instead of Raphael Colantonio directing, but both worked on Dishonored in the key positions.
I thought I read people left Rocksteady but the same Sefton Hill directing always + some writing, Ben Wyatt programmer, Ian Ball designer+ writing.
(If I can trust the wiki infos)
I usually assume the main roles were not the best people if a game is not really fun, but here it seems in both cases the main people were not really changed and the quality of what they directed/wrote/designed just fell off a cliff with increasing complexity, more outsourced work, more people involved, everything becoming harder to manage, more or too litlte involvement of top management??
 

Danknugz

Member
After everyone unanimously shit on this game over and over again. Don’t act like you care about a offline mode.
exactly, imagine going on a mission to create an anti ms thread and of all things you cherry pick redfall, doesn't do much for your cause.
 

FunkMiller

Gold Member
Prey and Redfall seems to share Ricardo Bare as the main writer, and Harvey Smith instead of Raphael Colantonio directing, but both worked on Dishonored in the key positions.
I thought I read people left Rocksteady but the same Sefton Hill directing always + some writing, Ben Wyatt programmer, Ian Ball designer+ writing.
(If I can trust the wiki infos)
I usually assume the main roles were not the best people if a game is not really fun, but here it seems in both cases the main people were not really changed and the quality of what they directed/wrote/designed just fell off a cliff with increasing complexity, more outsourced work, more people involved, everything becoming harder to manage, more or too litlte involvement of top management??

I think it's simply a case of developers who have a passion and interest in one type of game, being forced to make an entirely different type of game by the higher ups.

If you can't stand what you're making, it's likely to turn out as complete shit.
 
I think it's simply a case of developers who have a passion and interest in one type of game, being forced to make an entirely different type of game by the higher ups.

If you can't stand what you're making, it's likely to turn out as complete shit.
Warner forcing Suicide on Rocksteady, sure, but who would order Redfall to be created?
They might have been given some GaaS directive and shooter stuff seems natural but basically maybe a blank check to do whatever they come up with. There seemed to be no Gaas happening in any way, but the base is seemingly rather terrible, which is worse than Avengers and Squad where at least the main quests were competent - those fail at whatever is needed to be GaaS though. Hating to be ordered to have xyz in your game, okay, but Redfall seemed to fail even more so, with more freedom to come up with their own ideas.
 
Warner forcing Suicide on Rocksteady, sure, but who would order Redfall to be created?
They might have been given some GaaS directive and shooter stuff seems natural but basically maybe a blank check to do whatever they come up with. There seemed to be no Gaas happening in any way, but the base is seemingly rather terrible, which is worse than Avengers and Squad where at least the main quests were competent - those fail at whatever is needed to be GaaS though. Hating to be ordered to have xyz in your game, okay, but Redfall seemed to fail even more so, with more freedom to come up with their own ideas.

The game was a GaaS game but apparently when the acquisition happened and MS took a look they told the studio to remove the GaaS elements and gave them extra dev time to iron out the issues. Another element is the devs apparently all hated working on the game and most of them wanted Bethesda to cancel it. Just a bizarre development cycle overall for the game, it’s no wonder it launched in the state it did and it’s no wonder that it’s been a year and they didn’t even put out the DLC they sold or make this supposed offline mode.

But let’s be honest, Bethesda was in a position to be bought by MS for a reason. A lot of these studios were struggling before MS came along. That doesn’t excuse some of the piss poor management by MS since the acquisition, but it’s not surprising to see them trim some fat.
 
These games should just have offline modes by default. I know this one was supposed to have some dynamic features that required a connection, but if they are there it isn't something that you notice.

Regardless of what people say about it, the story isn't half bad so it would be good to see it released in an archival state. Though MS typically leaves the server up for quite some time anyway, Bleeding Edge is still online.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom