Back in May 2023, Arkane Austin launched a new franchise titled Redfall. It was a cooperative first-person shooter in which players must repel a vampire invasion on an island.

This approach clearly failed to win over fans and critics. The Metacritic average from the press was 56%, compared to just 3.6/10 from users. It was a stinging failure that led to the studio’s closure just one year later.

Upon its release on Xbox Series and PC, Redfall suffered from numerous issues, as well as the lack of a 60 frames-per-second mode on consoles, which is an absurdity for an FPS that requires a certain level of responsiveness. It took more than five months for such a mode to finally be made available.

In an interview with The Game Business, Harvey Smith and Ben Horne, who worked at Arkane Austin, shared surprising details about the creation of this infamous update aimed at introducing 60 FPS. After laying off the entire team, Xbox agreed to let some developers return to the office to work on this patch.

"We finished the game and it was very poorly received. We then worked on it for a year. We patched thousands of bugs. We then got laid off, but we had in the pipe version 1.4. It was the one that fixed tons of stuff.

• So, we went to Microsoft and said, ‘I know we don’t work here anymore, but can we please release this?’ And to their credit, they did not say no. They let six or seven of us sign forms that we could come back in the building. After being fired, we released 1.4, which I think if we had that on day one, it wouldn’t have set the world on fire, but it was a much, much better game."*

This week, Harvey Smith and Ben Horne announced their new studio, Black Pony Immersive.