Redfall Developers Reportedly Wanted the Game to Be Canceled

A new report has claimed that a number of developers at Arkane Studios that worked on Redfall, the latest first-party exclusive from Xbox, wanted the game to be outright canceled or rebooted. Upon the arrival of Redfall earlier in May, the co-op shooter was met with widespread disappointment from both fans and critics alike. Considering that Arkane had released so many acclaimed titles in the past, many fans wondered how Redfall turned out to be such a mess. Now, it seems that the game's development was mired with so many troubles that even those who helped create it weren't hopeful about the final product. 

Coming by way of Bloomberg, an extensive new report outlined many of the difficulties that Redfall had within Arkane. When its development first began in 2018, Redfall was conceptualized as a live-service title that could garner additional profits for Bethesda by selling in-game cosmetics. As the years continued onward, though, many of the developers working on Redfall began to leave the studio. This led to Arkane being greatly understaffed throughout much of the creation of Redfall. 

With so much turmoil behind the scenes, many developers at Arkane reportedly hoped that Microsoft would either cancel or reboot Redfall once the corporation gained control of Bethesda in 2021. Instead, Microsoft is said to have remained quite hands-off with Redfall and instead let Bethesda and Arkane continue with the game as normal. Without any shakeups coming down from those in charge at Xbox, Redfall shambled to the finish line and was released in the state that fans became familiar with. 

All in all, it sounds like there are a multitude of things that went wrong during the development of Redfall. And while there's a chance that the game could become salvaged in the coming months or years, it seems that if Microsoft would have taken more control of Redfall's development, this story could have turned out differently. Instead, Xbox fans are now placing that much more pressure on Starfield to deliver a high-quality first-party game later in 2023. 

Are you surprised to hear that even developers working on Redfall didn't have much confidence in the game? And what do you think of this situation overall? Let me know either down in the comments or message me on Twitter at @MooreMan12.