A Redfall offline mode was imminent before Microsoft shut down Arkane Austin, according to report

Vampire shooter Redfall was to receive an offline mode via update this very month before Microsoft staked creators Arkane Austin, according to a report. To spell it out, the cancellation of the offline functionality means that Redfall will now be officially playable for only as long as Microsoft run the servers. Another win for videogame preservation!

All that's from IGN's Wesley Yin-Poole, who says that the developers were working on DLC and updates for the game until "very recently", and were blindsided by Microsoft's internal announcement yesterday that it would close the studio along with Tango Gameworks and Alpha Dog Games. The planned Redfall DLC would have included a very long-awaited Hero Pass with two new characters, set to release this Halloween.

Redfall got its arse kicked in launch reviews for bugs, dodgy vamp AI and a basic lack of interest. Its development appears to have been a catastrophe, and Arkane Austin have taken their sweet time patching it, for whatever reason, but its world and narrative direction harboured the seeds of something greater. As Ed put it in our review, "there are moments of wonder buried away in Redfall, where Arkane's penmanship and architectural mastery surface."

I was vaguely hoping for a triumphant 2.0 resurrection, after the example of Cyberpunk 2077. Last June, Xbox's Matt Booty committed to going the distance with Redfall, telling Axios that "I want to support them to be able to keep working to deliver the game they had in mind."

In yesterday's internal memo, Booty justified the closures as necessary "to create capacity to increase investment in other parts of our portfolio and focus on our priority games." Arkane, meanwhile, have promised that anybody who bought access to the above Hero Pass via the Bite Back edition or upgrade will be "eligible to receive the value of the upgrade" in compensation. They also confirm that the game will receive no further updates, though there are no plans to close the servers just yet.

"I just want to say that I love all the people at Arkane Austin so much," Redfall's co-director Harvey Smith wrote on Xitter yesterday. "Great times, hard times, we went through so much, together. Of course, today's news is terrible, for all of us. Your talent will lift you up, and I will do anything I can to help."

In another Xitter thread, Gloomwood creator Dillon Rogers argues that Arkane Austin deserved the right to learn from their mistakes with Redfall, pointing out that the studio's operational budget - it employed fewer than 100 during Redfall's development, of whom reportedly 70% had left by the time of release - is a rounding error in the context of Microsoft's wider profits.

"Imagine if Arkane was shuttered after the Crossing was cancelled. We would have never gotten Dishonored or Prey 2017," he wrote. "Now there's no opportunity to learn from Redfall and focus on their strengths as a studio."