Schreier has released another investigative piece, this time regarding what happened with Redfall. Some of the more juicy bits:
Redfall started development in 2018. Arkane's Prey had been a flop, ZeniMax demanded microtransactions, and management wanted to make a game with broad appeal. It was pitched as a "multiplayer Arkane game" — but it was never clear what that would mean, or how it would work.
Arkane was always understaffed, but on Redfall, attrition also became a significant problem. By the end of Redfall's development, a whopping 70% of the Arkane Austin developers who worked on Prey were no longer there, according to people familiar as well as a Bloomberg analysis.
Veteran workers who weren’t interested in developing a multiplayer game left in droves.
Arkane was also perpetually understaffed, said people familiar with its production. The studio’s Austin office employed less than 100 people— sufficient for a relatively small, single-player game like Prey but not enough to compete with multiplayer behemoths like Fortnite and Destiny, which are developed by teams of hundreds.
Arkane Hoped Microsoft Would Cancel ‘Redfall instead only canceled PS5 version
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