Good news for anyone playing Redfall, or anyone who cares about a gaming ecosystem where publishers can’t make entire titles vanish from existence: the game is still going to get its offline mode.
Arkane Austin has just announced that Redfall will be getting one final update before the studio shuts its doors for good. The update will make some changes to the Neighborhood and Nest systems, potentially pulling in new or returning players, and it will also add single player pausing and an offline mode to let people actually continue to play the game, which otherwise would have all but disappeared whenever Microsoft decided to take down the servers.
Earlier this month Microsoft essentially dissolved four studios in one unceremonious swoop. Redfall developer Arkane Austin got cut alongside Tango Gameworks (Hi-Fi Rush) and Alpha Dog Games (Mighty DOOM), while Roundhouse Studios got merged into ZeniMax Online Studios. It was another heartbreaking example of game developers losing work, whether or not their game succeeded in the market. Redfall didn’t wow reviewers or gamers last year, but Hi-Fi Rush was a definite success.
The final Redfall update is bittersweet news to say the least. The game might have failed to make an impact, but Arkane proved with Prey that it has the capacity to make a great game. Given a little more time to make updates and actually release the game’s planned DLC, Arkane Austin might have been able to turn Redfall around. Now we’ll never know. The last update will technically keep the game alive, but with Arkane Austin itself being shuttered, that doesn’t feel like much of a win.
