At the time of Xbox’s sudden closure of Arkane Austin, the studio was reportedly working on a sizable Redfall update that would have been released this May.
The update in question reportedly featured new Hero Pass content along with the highly requested offline mode feature. This comes to light courtesy of an IGN report today that claims Arkane Austin was actively working on Redfall as part of the game’s roadmap of post-launch content until the studio’s closure yesterday, May 7.
This suggests Arkane Austin was unaware of Microsoft’s decision to close the studio alongside three others—Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog Studios, and Roundhouse Studios—until Microsoft’s internal announcement came through.
According to IGN’s May 7 report, the now-canceled Hero Pass Content for Redfall would have featured two new heroes for the vampire-fighting co-op shooter and was slated to launch on Halloween. That would have been the one-and-a-half-year mark of additions after its incredibly rocky launch in May 2023.
The always-online aspect of Redfall has been a major point of criticism since it first arrived. In an interview with Eurogamer in March this year, Redfall game director Harvey Smith told fans the studio was working on implementing an offline mode for the troubled vampire shooter.
“We listen. And we have already started work to address this in the future,” Smith stated at the time. “We have to do some things like encrypt your save games and do a bunch of UI work to support it. And so we are looking into—I’m not supposed to promise anything—but we’re looking into and working actively toward fixing that in the future.”
It’s a shame the update failed to materialize. Although the dev’s recent tweet on X (formerly Twitter) promised Redfall servers will be staying on “for players to enjoy”, there’s no telling how long that’s actually going to be. A working offline mode would have certainly helped the cause of video game preservation in a currently live-service-dominated AAA industry.
