Redout developers 34BigThings recently posted a response to a Digital Foundry analysis of their game where they vehemently rejected Foundry’s findings and even mentioned legal action.
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After the game was reported to run with a 1080p rendering on the Xbox One X version, 34BigThings refuted the findings and referenced the dynamic resolution scaling while posting their own response to the claims that can be seen below.
“Nicest part of a cloudy saturday morning? Waking up to a shitstorm raging upon you, based on what we can call incompetent technical analysis at best, fake news at worst.
“Digital Foundry might have been a competent source of technical information in the past, but it might be currently going down to the click-baiting path. They just published an opinionated video on our game, Redout, in which they talk about Xbox One X performances, framerate and resolution, mentioning over and over that Redout shows a 1080p rendering for the Xbox One X version.
“This is a pure, straight lie. The Xbox One X got an enhancement update a couple of weeks ago which brings 4k rendering with dynamic resolution scaling to everyone (owners or not of 4k TV). More specifically, we managed to scale the resolution between 90% and 50% of native 4k, which means the resolution goes from the upper limit of 3456×1944 to the lower one of 1920×1080 [confirmed also by VG Tech]. More technical details on this will follow in the next days, when everybody will be back from holiday vacations but meanwhile let us spell it out: it’s not 1080p.
“As many users reported, there are still some framerate hiccups where the game can’t keep the 60fps pace and significantly drops below the 45+ threshold, which is something we are aware and very sorry of. This happens more frequently where many AI opponents are factored in, while it’s close to nonexistent on time attacks, solo races and races with few opponents. We are aware of these issues and we’ll keep working on those as long as possible.
“But saying that Redout renders at 1080p is plain false. This, combined with the fact that some players seem to be highly sensitive to the XBox vs. PS4 performances tug-of-war, caused a rain of negative comments on our heads, all based on wrong information.
“We are currently looking into various ways to defend our public image. Not only because we dislike being called lazy or incompetent gratuitously, but also to send a message to the players and the industry. Gamedevs (indies especially) are amongst the most hard working people, to the point that burnout and crunch culture in game development are widespread. Really, just stop calling them lazy to the first hiccup. And don’t fabricate excuses for calling them lazy. Ok? Thank you.
“See you on the track, hopefully faster than ever.”
In a statement first given to Wccftech that mostly lines up with the official statement above from 34BigThings CEO Valerio Di Donato, there was one difference towards the end. “Legal action” was mentioned in the exclusive statement, but the official press release dialed back the phrase to just “various ways to defend” their public image. Images of tweets where users called out 34BigThings after the claims began circulating were also used in the official response.
Digital Foundry apologized to 34BigThings in a tweet and said they’d be retesting the game soon.
