Redfall just received its first major patch in almost 4 months, but it might be too little, too late.
Remember Redfall? The latest game by Dishonored developer Arkane was released back in June of this year, but critics were less than impressed with it, calling it bland, unfinished and soulless. "It's the first Arkane game I don't like at all: a maddeningly incoherent and unfun shooter that looks bizarre next to the liveliness of 2017's Prey or the Dishonored games," wrote Tyler Colp of PC Gamer at the time.
And clearly the game's target audience agreed. Just last week Redfall made headlines for all the wrong reasons when Lauren Bergin of PCGamesN noticed that the game only had 3 concurrent players on Steam at one point – just short of the 4 players needed to actually fill a lobby.
Which is less than ideal for a primarily multiplayer-focused shooter, of course. With the last major patch for the game having been released some 4 months prior, everyone assumed that the game had been more or less abandoned.
Well, the timing of the article couldn't have been better (or worse, depending on your viewpoint), as it turns out. The literal day after it was posted Arkane released a new major update for Redfall, promising performance improvements, gameplay adjustments and numerous other changes to the game. The patch notes really do make it seem like a substantial overhaul of the game, but whether that will be enough to revive it remains to be seen.
The Redfall Update Is The First Sign Of Life From A Struggling Arkane In Months
I have no opinion on Redfall, the game, but I do have one on Redfall, the train wreck that tore Arkane apart according to Jason Schreier's report at the time. "By the end of Redfall’s development, roughly 70 per cent of the Austin staff who had worked on Prey would no longer be at the company, [...]" the report reads.
Critically acclaimed development studios being coerced into making expensive dead-on-arrival live service games by higher-ups chasing after GaaS money is hardly a rare occurrence anymore. However, that doesn't make it any less tragic to hear about, especially when it happens to a studio as unique and beloved as Arkane. It would be a real shame if they never got to make an immersive sim like Prey (2017) again.
Then again, maybe this update is a sign that the studio is starting to recover. If Redfall's situation develops any further we'll keep you in the loop, of course.