Laid off Arkane devs pleaded with Xbox to release final Redfall update
Former Arkane Austin leads begged Microsoft for a shot at salvaging their work after being laid off, per interviews with VGC and PC Gamer. Harvey Smith and Ben Horne revealed that when the studio was shut down in May 2024, a final update for the poorly received shooter Redfall was sitting unfinished.
Smith told The Game Business they'd spent a year post-launch patching the game, culminating in a version 1.4 that fixed thousands of bugs. After the mass layoffs, a small group of ex-employees went back to Xbox management. "I know we don’t work here anymore, but can we please release this?" Smith recalled asking, according to VGC.
PC Gamer reports that Microsoft agreed. The company allowed six or seven former staffers to sign forms and return to the office to complete the patch. The final update, featuring a long-promised offline mode, shipped on May 30, 2024.
Smith admitted the patched game still wouldn't have been a smash hit, but argued it was "a much, much better game" than the version that launched. Horne called the post-firing release "an achievement unlocked" in his career.
The two veterans, along with colleague Ricardo Bare, have since founded a new studio named Black Pony Immersive. The team plans to focus on the immersive sim genre they're known for.
