Arkane Austin's closure closes the door on Redfall's future

Before yesterday's sudden closure, Arkane's Austin studio was preparing to support its 2023 game, Redfall. But with development now over, those plans have been abandoned.

According to a new IGN report, the team had a roadmap in place for its troubled shooter. DLC and updates, such as a pair of previously promised heroes and an offline mode, were said to be in development.

Makers of recent live-service games like this and Suicide Squad said offline would be implemented post-launch. Without it, Redfall will eventually die when the servers go, and it's anyone's guess as to when that will be.

As IGN understands, Arkane Austin was working on this roadmap until "very recently." The DLC characters were apparently set to launch this Halloween, over 18 months after the game's initial launch on May 3, 2023.

Concerns about Redfall's future were raised shortly before Arkane Austin's closure was revealed. Last week, Kotaku reported the unease around the aforementioned DLC heroes, whose release was promised in the game's deluxe edition.

With support for the game now ending, Xbox has reassured Redfall players that those who purchased the Hero Pass as part of the premium Bite Back edition or the Bite Back upgrade will "be eligible to receive the value of the upgrade," though specifics are currently unknown.

Redfall's troubled development was well-known and one of the clearer signs in recent years of something rotten at Xbox. Not every live-service game gets a chance to turn its fortune around, but it's equally dismaying when that's abruptly yanked out of the creators' hands.