Ahead of its closure, it sounds like Arkane Austin was working on a pitch for an “immersive sim,” which is far closer to the studio’s strengths than the multiplayer flop, Redfall. The developer is now offering players to who purchased the Bite Back Edition and those who paid for the new heroes with a “make-good” gift.
A Bloomberg report (via VGC) revealed that the team was working on returning to its roots before Xbox Game Studios CEO Matt Booty closed the studio. Odds are — if we had to guess — it would take more of a form of something like Dishonored, which put the studio as a whole on the map.
During a recent town hall meeting, ZeniMax head Jill Braff allegedly said that she hoped it would focus on quality games with a smaller scope than large projects, noting how difficult it is to manage nine separate studios with a “lean central team” while growing the tasks said team needs to do.
“It’s hard to support nine studios all across the world with a lean central team with an ever-growing plate of things to do…”
In terms of Redfall, though, it sounded like things were looking up, with the team raring to produce a patch to disable the always-online requirement and let players enjoy the game offline. Meanwhile, supposedly we would’ve seen the promised heroes drop on Halloween, but of course, now that’s never gonna happen.
Alongside Arkane Austin, fans waved goodbye to mobile-first developer Alpha Dog Games and saw the surprising closure of Hi-Fi Rush and The Evil Within developer Tango Gameworks. The latter of which caused quite a ruckus from fans, as it’s been rather consistent when it comes to producing high-quality games. Additionally, Roundhouse Games was absorbed into ZeniMax Online Studios.
