The Arkane Studios and Bethesda title went through all sorts of phases until its release.
Redfall went on sale May 2, 2023 (also available on Xbox Game Pass) being quite poorly received by the press, also causing a strong division within the gaming community with people who like the game and people who don’t. For this reason, Phil Spencer came out to show his face and apologize for the poor results of Redfall, a title developed by Arkane and Bethesda. In his own statements, Phil Spencer “takes full responsibility for making available to the public a game that should have been very good”. Which, as Phil points out, is “significantly lower” To “internal scores” from Microsoft.
Take a look at our analysis below these lines.
However, for the creators of Redfall, the bad reception was not a big surprise
To put it all in context, remember that the development of Redfall began in 2018. At the time, ZeniMax, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, was looking for a takeover. Behind the scenes, the company was encourage their studios to develop revenue-generating games under the umbrella of the increasingly popular “games as a service” genre. Among the top-grossing titles we had Overwatch, Fortnite, and Apex Legends.
ZeniMax saw the potential and made sure to incorporate microtransactions into their games. That’s when Fallout, Doom, and Wolfenstein started getting online monetization. Unfortunately, the specialty of Arkane Studios were the single player titles, with games like Deathloop and Dishonored designed to be enjoyed solo. So, rooted in these habits, the developers have trouble designing a multiplayer adventure.
To make matters worse, Arkane was also perpetually understaffed., according to inside sources. Fewer than 100 people worked in the Austin study. To give you an idea, behind Fortuite there are more than 800 employees
The setbacks of the study were fatal. Veteran workers who weren’t interested in developing a multiplayer game they left en masse. By the time Redfall’s development ended, about 70% of the Austin staff who had worked on Prey had left, as he explains Bloomberg.
During, On September 21, 2020, Microsoft acquired ZeniMax for $7.5 billion.. It was an ambitious move that gave Xbox control of lucrative franchises like Doom and Fallout, as well as the upcoming Starfield.
While adding Arkane to Microsoft’s excellent portfolio wasn’t the primary goal, it was potentially a major boon for Xbox, especially if Redfall turned out to be a good game. The acquisition gave some Arkane employees hope that Microsoft might undo Redfall.
Unfortunately, all these ups and downs, along with the demotivation of the teams and the time it took for the studios to realize that we had to make a multiplayer game, they cost Bethesda a huge amount of time and money. The acquisition didn’t help much, and worse, Microsoft didn’t make sense of the game.
Very disappointed with the result the only option was to delay the title’s release date or cancel it. However, the latter was not a viable option for Microsoft. In the end, while not as bad a title as many would claim, Redfall went on sale, prompting all sorts of criticism from press and fans alike. Hope the next project does not suffer from these difficulties and problems and I come up with a round product as we are used to.
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