Redfall’s Last Patch Reached Players Only After Its Developers Were Fired
Harvey Smith said six or seven former Arkane Austin staffers were allowed back into Microsoft's building after being laid off to release version 1.4 on May 30, 2024.
Redfall’s final patch came from a team that technically no longer worked on the game. Former Arkane Austin developers had already been laid off when they asked Microsoft to let them return and release version 1.4 on May 30, 2024, a patch they had prepared before the studio closed.
Redfall received a poor critical and commercial response after launch, earning a 56 Metacritic score, but Arkane Austin continued working on it for roughly a year. According to former studio director Harvey Smith, that work included fixing thousands of bugs and preparing a version that addressed many of the game’s lingering problems.
Smith discussed the game’s troubled development and the unusual final patch in an interview with The Game Business. He said the team had version 1.4 ready when the layoffs arrived, leaving the developers with an awkward request for Microsoft.
“I know we don’t work here anymore, but can we please release this?” the former developers asked, according to Smith. Microsoft did not reject the request. Six or seven former employees signed forms allowing them to return to the building, where they released Redfall’s 1.4 patch after being fired.
Smith does not believe the update would have transformed Redfall into a hit if it had arrived at launch. He did, however, describe it as a much better version of the game, with fixes for a large number of issues that had damaged the original release.
Ben Horne, who served as production director, also viewed the release as a personal career milestone. Releasing a patch after being fired and seeing the studio shut down is a strange way to finish a project, but it gave the team one last chance to deliver work it had already completed.
Since Arkane Austin’s closure, Smith, Horne, and fellow Arkane veteran Ricardo Bare have founded Black Pony Immersive. The new studio is focused on immersive sims, a genre connected to their previous work on series such as Thief and Dishonored.
Redfall 1.4 could not change the game’s fate
Before its release, version 1.4 was expected to add an offline mode and other features. The update did not rescue Redfall from its reputation. A later revisit found that the game still fell short of what Arkane Austin had hoped to make, even though the update suggested the studio might have improved it over time.
The unanswered question is what could have happened with more development time. Smith and Horne never got the chance to find out whether later updates such as versions 1.5, 1.6, or 1.7 could have taken Redfall closer to their original vision.
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