The news is shocking for an industry still reeling from thousands of layoffs in 2023 and 2024, and is seen as a cynical move that ran against the atmosphere Microsoft wanted to unleash on acquisitions.
Hi-Fi Rush, especially, though, still damning Decree. You can create a huge wave of excitement and, in Microsoft's own words, make a solid game based on fresh IP beyond expectations - only the world is less than two years later
But Arkane Austin had an almost reverse problem — before the major flop of Redfall in 2023-5, well-received pieces (Prey, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, Deathloop, I created a library of (Dishonoured). That thing had a very troubled development cycle. As my fellow PC gamer writer Joshua Wolens wrote last year:
"A Bloomberg study states that the development of Redfall was suffered by chronic understaffing. Arkane Austin's team of less than 100 people was simply not big enough for the job of creating a marquee, multiplayer-focused shooter."
Nevertheless, there seemed to have been a serious effort to make Redfall a revival of the underdog. Updates would follow, and Redfall was a long way away from Cyberpunk 2.0-style "redemption", but a stranger thing happened. According to Wesley Yin-Poole of IGN, the dream itself did not die until yesterday's announcement of the shutdown.
"IGN is set to add two new characters to the Vampire Co-op Shooter's currently canceled Hero Pass content, this Halo" The report states that this work had been done "very recently", so it is unclear whether the Arkane Austin developers were struggling until the announcement of the closure. It is unclear whether.
Given the shock of the surviving studio Arkane Lyon's Dinga Bakaba, who called the decision a "gut sting," it doesn't take a detective to say the whole thing was probably unexpected.
As for whether Redfall was saved by new content, that's quite another thing. We scored 44 in the Redfall review, but it was almost universally panned. If anything, to my surprise, Redfall (not the studio itself) has not been discontinued until now, and Arkane Austin has brought them back to the genre they have a proper history of. Suicide Squad: Killing the Justice League released in (relatively) much better condition, and even that game is running into problems. Live service is not really a safe bet.
On the other hand, I think Arkane Austin deserves a chance to try. Maybe a massive overhaul to the game and its system could do something to raise it from the casket it landed so rudely. Even if the Redfall was doomed, the Arkan had to move on to something else.
As it stands, Arkane Austin's last hurrah was arrested it was not making a real business in the first place, a good and profitable track record will no longer save you, as bad advice live service developers have aptly pointed out in Microsoft's wake.
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