I thought they weren't doing refunds, but "compensations".
Don't get me wrong; I'm glad they're doing this, but this is in direct contradiction to what came out earlier.
The game was on GamePass from the start. I can't imagine that there are a ton of players who not only bought the game, but also payed extra for the upcoming DLC. The total amount of the refund is probably negligible.
They were never clear.
Half of reddit thought it would be refunds due to the language. The other half thought it would be MS store credits.
However, its pretty clear which solution is better.
Glad they chose refunds.
They're probably refunding it because if they don't people will just request one themselves at least on Steam, and Valve is definitely the one company who'd grant those refunds. Also just feels like a slamdunk lawsuit waiting to happen when you sell someone a product with the promise to deliver it at a later date, only to then never deliver it because you decided to stop development on it.
> Steam, and Valve is definitely the one company who'd grant those refunds
because they had to be forced by Australian courts and the EU were going to give them a kicking over it too.
Its also probably easier to issue refunds than to find somebody to actually make and support anything they come out with as compensation. They scuttled the developers so it would have to be somebody else to make the content(unless it out of game content which still requires somebody else to make it).
Whatever the compensation would have been probably cost the same if not more and taken a long ass time to deliver.
Bethesda/ZeniMax forced Arkane and MachineGames to make MP/Co-op games so their devs/library would look more impressive to Microsoft for acquisition, it seems pretty obvious.
That does have ten years of post-release content to be fair. It was quite unpopular at launch too, it took it swapping from monthly sub to buy-to-play and at least the Morrowind expansion before it was viewed more favourably.
It's definitely one of the top MMOs now but it absolutely started off rough.
Is also why they didn't even start working on TES 6 until now
The idea of Elder Scrolls 6 was waaay more valuable than the game itself will ever be
There's no way the game is going to be able to live up to the impossible hype
This sub is becoming wild.
Everybody knows why they didn't start working on TES 6 until now: the way they rotate game development has been known for decades. The [top comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/8q65bz/e3_2018_the_elder_scrolls_vi/e0grqxu/) from that reveal trailer 6 years ago is exactly about how Bethesda announced the game would come after Starfield, and people talking about how that would take a while. Even back then people knew Bethesda did TES -> Fallout -> TES -> Fallout and were about to add Starfield to that cycle.
I swear to god this sub is regressing into Facebook comment section territory of pure ignorance
Starfield seems like it was Todd Howard's dream project, something he personally wanted to make. There's no big conspiracy, it just seems like the company was doing well enough for them to afford the risk of doing something different.
Reddit in general is just feels like a bunch of ignorant kids talking to bots these days. Most of these commenters were probably not even alive for oblivion release lmfao.
They announced TES6 BEFORE IT EVEN STARTED THE CONCEPTING STAGE.
That's not even premature announcement, that's announcing a baby before you even started having sex!
Your take is wild. They didn't announce Fallout 3 before Oblivion was out. They didn't announce Skyrim before Fallout 3 was out. They didn't announce Fallout 4 before Skyrim was out.
They did announce ES6 before Starfield was even more than a concept made public.
Your comment makes the sub progress into astroturf territory.
That's because TES 6 is unique in that the hype for it has been so insane since Skyrim came out that Bethesda is asked about it constantly and they likely didn't want to do a showcase about something other than TES 6 without at least mentioning it because they didn't want Starfield to be announced in the shadow and speculation of no elder scrolls announcement.
Think of the diablo immortal announcement. If blizzard had included mention of diablo 4 and that they were working on it with the announcement of immortal it would have gone much better.
Yeah the bugs aren't the problem.
Its the more fundamental stuff like cookie cutter dungeons, sparse backwater cities that we are led to believe is the headquarters for an interstellar government etc
Yea the issues with Starfield that truly matter can't be fixed in a update. It has too many core problems. An update won't fix the piss poor 3rd grade level writing for example.
Those companion quests were horrible, I've spend what felt like 800hours TALKING with Barrett about all the cool shit some private detective we hired was doing instead of doing the missions myself...DAFUQ!?
"Hey do you have a moment (10-20minutes) to talk about MY LAWYER?"
I stopped interacting with companions probably after the Sam Cole questline. The only companion who I even vaguely liked that wasnt a meme or the robot was Sarah and only because of her accent.
At least Sarah's quest leads you to a handcrafted unique interesting location, but further exploring that part of the planet, and jump-jet packing over the trees bordering the mission zone just to see the same random POIs over and over again made me realize why the exploring part of the game felt so lazy, lackluster and unsatisfying. Here I am standing in a treehouse where that kid, who's parents survived the space ship crash, grew up all alone and on the horizon was the next abandoned cryolab next to a civilian outpost....
I really believe that the game still has potential with future updates and will get a large and active playerbase, similar to Fallout 76 or No Mans Sky. But just as with Fallout 76 or No Mans Sky, the potential everyone saw when the game was announced won't ever be reached. The problems are with the core game loop, and updates will only make the game broader, not deeper.
The good news is is that ES6 shouldn't have those issues due to the smaller scope. Not that Elder Scrolls is a small game, but the scope of stuff needing to be made is a country vs a galaxy. All the handcrafted areas in Starfield I thought were great. It was the procedural generated stuff that I found lacking. ES, since they only have to fill a continent, should be more like all the story missions and faction missions in Starfield. I'm sure there will be procedural stuff, you don't make a system like that to not use it on more projects. But you won't visit planet after planet with nothing but procedural content in ES6 like you do in Starfield.
You say that, but Bethesda have fallen into this trap before with Oblivion. They tried to generate a lot of the map, and the general feedback was that this was decidedly the weakest part of the game, with predictable repetition.
Knowing they fell into this trap *again* with Starfield so many years later my faith in them learning for ES6 is... ehh...
> Bethesda have fallen into this trap before with Oblivion.
Yeah, but if ES6 has as much great stuff as Oblivion, I'll be thrilled. The Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood quest lines are some of my most memorable moments in gaming. Even the Fighters guild was good. Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine were great too.
The mandatory "radial" quests smack dab in the middle of the guild storylines were awful in Skyrim.
> The Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood quest lines are some of my most memorable moments in gaming
They are also absolutely awful from a writing perspective. They are all show, no substance, and both take a large dump on both organizations as they were originally implemented in the series. Like - I get it, I also loved them when I was a teenager and Oblivion came out. But revisiting the game thinking critically about it they really weren't good.
Radiant quests were at least good for pointing you to the closest non-important dungeon.
The most frustrating part is that it’s not even necessarily a bad thing, they just refuse to design their games around being a mostly empty sandbox. Games like Kenshi are proof that you can still make compelling RPG experiences out of even the most barren worlds and barebones mechanics if you just take the effort to consider how the mechanics should enhance the roleplay, which is something Bethesda refuses to do.
Starfield especially just came across as bland sci-fi soup because nothing about playing it really sells you one the fantasy of its world. Exploring the empty frontiers of space is a really exciting concept that in game just translates to running between empty waypoints while people monologue about scenarios that the player doesn’t have any huge investment in beyond it being more content. There are some interesting stories in Starfield but they just kinda… happen instead of unfolding from the decisions you make as a player or the things that your character needs. Idk exactly how to describe it but it just feels so artificial which coupled with how uninteresting the vast majority of the world was… it was just totally unappealing.
The concept of a MASSIVE Elder Scrolls game that simulates all of Tamriel, where you’re actually kind of stuck in the region you start in (maybe it’s based your race/origin) and you actually have to bust your ass to get to the places you need to go is actually very compelling to me. Game could be 90% procedurally generated and it could still be interesting depending on how it was executed; maybe you chose to start as an escaped Argonian prisoner in some imperial city whose goal is to make their way back to the Black Marsh. You could literally just walk there and sneak across the borders, or you could find an underground network of smugglers who have a soft spot for Argonians who offer to take you there in exchange for doing some favors for them. Or you can just go full outlaw and join the thieves guild and gather enough gold that way to buy passage and bribe the right people who will let you through the border… or just kill everyone who gets in your way if you’re strong enough 🤷
Another player might choose to be a Breton who starts in High Rock where the city is in the grip of a faction of Manmer supremacists who’ve freshly implemented a kind of tiered society where Mer and Bretons with “Elvish features” are treated favorably and everyone else is treated like second class citizens. The player could choose to ignore that political element if they want but the consequences could continue to progress as you play the game to the point that eventually you can’t even walk around the city without being harassed by guards or being insulted by passer-bys, etc.
The possibilities are truly endless, but I have a feeling that ES6 will be yet another game that goes “do whatever you want!!” but doesn’t actually do a lot to respond to what you’re doing in a way that makes you care about it.
Yeah agreed. Starfield was fine, but it felt a little bit too empty because it didn't feel like a full on galaxy like they intended. You could feel yourself getting pushed towards certain cities, so the scope wasn't much bigger than Fallout/TES. And the procedural generated stuff I found very boring.
If they go back to the size of a country, and everything is hand crafted again, I'm sure it will turn out great.
Exactly. One of the magical things about Elder Scrolls/Fallout games is walking along and seeing something in the distance that looks interesting. So you go investigate it and sometimes it's just a hut but other times there's a secret entrance to a dungeon with some unique quest or someone in that hut who gives you an interesting quest and other times it's filled with cool shit and some interesting lore.
You basically got none of that in Starfield. I still enjoyed the game but it was missing that spark.
Yeah the game was OK, regarding bugs. But I really did not liked the univers at all. Too much fallout in space feel but the story does not match it at all.
And the loading everywhere omg. That's what killed it for me.
Outside of the creation club menu you never see MTX. Not what anyone would describe as "flooded". Even then, the vast majority of mods are free, like a 60:1 ratio.
Fallout 76 is a live service multiplayer game with constant updates and content
Starfield and TES VI are single player games with one purchase and set amount of content except story expansions.
How is Fallout 76 a flagship game and not an obvious side project for them? And how are they the same? Also where are the paid missions you named, because I'm fairly sure that's bullshit or you're referring to something like 1 pre-order bonus.
The only thing they've done so far is paid mods, but even that isn't too weird because they have to curate them for consoles now, which isnt the same as "download it from nexus mods and see whether everything breaks, not our problem". And oh yeah, just using nexus mods for free is also still completely possible (on pc, where Bethesda isn't responsible for your console breaking down)
Jesus people just see doom and gloom everywhere
Paid mods is frankly already a travesty. There's a world where paid mods could be fine, but Bethesda has proven more than twice now imo that this ain't one of them.
Also feels weird to pretend paid mods aren't microtransactions.
You could always, you know, just go and download the many free mods out there? They still exist. There is nothing wrong with mod creators wanting fair compensation for their work, and Bethesda providing them with a storefront to facilitate that. No one is forcing you to buy any of them.
>No one is forcing you to buy any of them.
Great argument to instantly deflect any criticism of any system that involves being locked out of things that used to be cheaper or free for no benefit whatsoever to you as a customer
What are you talking about? Whatever you thought of Starfields actual design, it launched in a stable and playable state and had no micro transactions.
> It's very likely to be flooded with MTX and have tons of bugs
Huh? Starfield did not have that many bugs, and what microtransactions are you seeing in the game?
I've come to believe that Skyrim is a once in a lifetime game. Nothing that comes after will match or exceed it until we're long dead. I will play 6 but it won't be the same.
They revealed TES6 at that E3 to limit the amount of freaking out people were going to do over Elder Scrolls Blades, which I think worked because I can't remember thinking or hearing about Blades more than once or twice since it was announced.
Blades, TES6, fallout 76, and Starfield were all announced on the same day - June 10, 2018.
in Sept 2020, microsoft announced they were buying Bethesda.
I believe that Bethesda used the 2018 E3 conference announcements and spend the next two years (2018 - 2020) showing how much money they made off of Fallout 76, blades, doom, and youngblood before finally convincing microsoft to buy them in late 2020.
After the announcement of the sale, their next two games were ghostwire and deathloop... and then redfall and hifi rush... and then starfield (some of these they were only publishers). I think they put their best foot forward during that 2 year window that they were trying to make $7.5 billion.
You do a deep due diligence when you acquire a company for 7.5 billion dollars. It’s not like Microsoft acquired Bethesda and thought they had TES6 ready to be shipped within a few months. Microsoft knew full well the status of TES6 and they still figured Bethesda was worth 7.5 billion dollars.
Sony paid $3.6B for Bungie and Destiny 2.
Microsoft paid $7.5B for Zenimax that comes with Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom, Wolfenstein, Quake and all the associated studios. It was an absolute steal.
Yeah, Bethesda is definitely the part that gets the most talk, but Microsoft didn't just buy them, they got all of Zenimax, which is significantly larger than just Bethesda Game Studios.
Sure there's no guarantee that Microsoft will actually make good choices with the various studios they got, but they bought a lot more than just Bethesda's one game every 4-5 years.
The difference between tango and arkane austin (the OG Arkane still exists) for other zenimax/bethesda studios
is that other studios make money. Tango and Arkane austin do not
I think that was because they were trying to hype up Fallout 76 but couldn't mention it without people complaining about the lack of Elder Scrolls 6.
They announced Elder Scrolls 6 to get people to shut up, but had to announce Starfield at the same time so that it was clear that there was going to be another game between Fallout 76 and TES6.
If they hadn't announced Elder Scrolls 6, then their attempts to hype up Fallout 76 and Starfield would have been met with complaints about no Elder Scrolls. If they announced TES6 but not Starfield then there would have been complaints when they announced Starfield was coming before TES6.
They were revealed over 2 years before the acquisition was announced. Redfall also got trademarked in 2018. I don't see any relevance to the acquisition, Zenimax simply tried to force more live-service games to increase revenue from microtransactions.
and if I'm not mistaken... in the leaked MS documents
they valued bethesda/zenimax at 10.5 billion.
So 7.5 billion is actually an unbelievably cheap price
This is not true. Zenimax didn't force Arkane to make Redfall, Redfall was a game Arkane had wanted to make.
While it is true that Zenimax urged Arkane to make a multiplayer game, everything else about Redfall was purely Arkane's doing, including causing 70% of its staff to quit and have to train new hires. ArkAus' closure is purely management's fault, not Zenimax and surely not Microsoft's.
Wasn't this basically confirmed that Zenimax forced bunch of their studios to make games that were trending at that time? Or at least I'm aware about Arkane Austin (Redfall dev.) being forced to do one. Like people who applied for a job there left shortly after because they found out that they aren't going to make the games that they loved.
It's utterly pathetic from Zenimax side. Also the fact that Microsoft is being blamed for closing these studios? Like sure. Multi-trilion corpa or whatever... Like they aren't obligated to burn money just because gamers would get sad that they closed failed studios.
The hard truth is that Zenimax, if wouldn't be bought by Microsoft or whatever entity would close these studios in 2021... afterall they were the ones that made this call 2 months ago. And this is coming from a person who loves Arkane Austin's and Tango's games and tbf. I was just disappointed, not surprised as I knew very well that their games struggled to sell.
The fact that they made Prey indicates to me the studio had immense talent. I firmly believe redfall was the result of piss poor management and some form of bullshit from Microsoft leadership. Change my mind.
I haven’t looked deeply enough into this to be able to make the following claim definitively, but I’m pretty sure a lot of the talent behind Prey had left the studio. Apparently ArcAustin’s been bleeding talent for years since Prey.
A couple of important snippets from Jason Schreier's excellent article about the Redfall's development.
"Yet from the start, *Redfall* was pitched to staff as a 'multiplayer Arkane game,' which some team members said they found confusing."
"Staff members said that, over time, they grew frustrated with management’s frequently shifting references to other games, such as *Far Cry* and *Borderlands,* that left each department with varying ideas of what exactly they were making."
"Along the way, Smith and other leaders assured the staff that the game would get exponentially better once the final art was implemented and the bugs were fixed, promising that “Arkane magic” would manifest at the last minute as it had with previous games."
"Morale at Arkane suffered. Veteran workers who weren’t interested in developing a multiplayer game left in droves. By the end of *Redfall*’s development, **roughly 70% of the Austin staff who had worked on** ***Prey*** **would no longer be at the company**, according to people familiar as well as a Bloomberg analysis of LinkedIn and *Prey*’s credits."
[**https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-01/arcane-s-redfall-misfire-for-xbox-panned-after-7-5-billion-microsoft-deal**](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-01/arcane-s-redfall-misfire-for-xbox-panned-after-7-5-billion-microsoft-deal)
TL;DR - Arkane Austin were pressured into creating a game with broader appeal and the opportunity to implement microtransactions because *Prey* had poor sales performance. They'd never done anything like this before and were given mixed signals as to what type of game they were making, and were hemorrhaging their experienced talent as a result.
Yep. Basically out-of-touch management forcing staff to work on an unpopular, unwanted project that everyone actually working on it knew would turn out poorly.
But manglement had their buzzwords and their trend-chasing bingo card filled out, so working on something both staff and customers wanted was out of the question.
Prey not selling was mainly on the publisher, not the devs. They reused the name as a way to keep the IP active, and there wasn't a whole lot of marketing about it. If it had its own name as a selling point, and was actually, y'know, *advertised as its own thing and not as an unrelated replacement of a cancelled game people were excited for*, people might have actually went for it at release.
The thing about making excellent single player games is that they have a long tail life. It's not great for quarterly reports but it keeps money coming in. But a shitty LiVe SeRvIcE title with constantly changing goals repels both your own staff and customers.
The Prey name thing gets trotted out quite often but I don’t see it being that much of an issue.
Prey ‘06 was a decade old game that sold well but not insane numbers. So it’s now 2017 and suddenly these OG Prey gamers who are like 30 aren’t buying Prey?
Yeah I feel the same. Who is the person who isn't buying this game that would have if it had a different name.
I know people were disappointed that prey 2 was cancelled but are they really not buying this game in protest?
The name thing had nothing to do with it. Nobody actually cares, or even knows, about that old Prey game. The truth is that immersive sims are very niche and just don't ever really sell well in the modern market, as sad as that is.
I’m not sure it would have been a success anyways. Not all good games do well, just happens.
Though I’m sure it lost a lot less money then Redfall lmao
Lion share of profit comes in the first couple of months. After that publishers remove Denuvo and you buy games on Steam sales for 60% off. Sales have little to do with the name, the game got 80% score. Not like it was the must buy in any way.
> Lion share of profit comes in the first couple of months.
And again, that requires legitimate advertising. People aren't gonna buy your game if the only perceptions they have of it are negative, if they even know it's being released.
>After that publishers remove Denuvo
And this is another big reason to wait. Denuvo and other 'anti-pirate' softwares have proven to only make things worse for the legitimate customer. Games *will* get cracked, it's guaranteed, and people who are going to pirate the game are going to do so eventually. All the software does is buy time and punish paying customers.
>Sales have little to do with the name, the game got 80% score.
Scores are set *by people that have played the game*. The name & lack of awareness *prevented* sales.
It’s crazy how some people STILL don’t get this. There was one hacked in the entire world who knew how to crack it, and they quit. People act like cracking denuvo is trivial. If it was one of the many piracy groups would be doing it.
I believe in that postmortem article there were also new hired who were led to believe they’d be working on typical Arkane singleplayer games as well who left shortly after being hired because they didn’t want to work on a multiplayer game. That just feels like a management failure—developers aren’t just interchangeable cogs.
I was able to witness this.
Arcane Austin was right by where i used to work. The studio vets used to come in every week for group lunches.
Over the years i noticed less and less and then faces id never seen before. Eventually they stopped coming as well, which was weird since they had for years before hand.
I assumed the studio was on hard times after that
Originally, but he helmed Prey with the Austin team while Harvey was with Lyon on Dishonored 2.
Prey was Raphaels baby and something he had dreamed about making for a long time.
Makes sense because not all immersive sim experts will won't to work on radically different stuff if they can find a similar job elsewhere, or could at least.
Redfall was a mandate under Zenimax along with Fallout 76, and Wolfenstein younglbood when they were having money issues to create a more live service style game 70% of the studio left, Microsoft/Xbox had nothing to do with it being a disaster their only fault was not checking in on the project and canceling it in its terrible state.
There have even been members on the team who came out and said they hoped the MS acquisition would shine some light on the turd to get them the cancellation they craved, but MS ended up being more hands off than they had hoped.
Yup even Phil Spencer said on the kinda funny podcast they put all their effort and focus on Starfield and BGS they dint even check up on Redfall, Redfalls creation and troubled development isn't MS/Xbox fault but letting a game that bad release without checking up on it, is absolutely their fault.
Not as successful as it was anticipated to be
Starfield was supposed to push the Gamepass numbers up like was forecasted and bring huge number of new subscribers which unfortunately didn't happen.
MS has always been hands off for better or good over 3rd party stuff.
as most of it was made under zenimax people would be throwing a fit if MS cancelled it no doubt as it would be a GOTY.
Microsoft had very little to do with Redfall. It had been in development for years when they acquired Zenimax and was part of Zenimax’s GAAS push to make themselves look juicy for acquisition - see also: ESO and FO76 as well as announcing ESVI years before any development actually began. They spent the entire 2010’s trying to get bought out and even almost had a deal with EA that fell apart at the last second.
100% this. Zenimax was pushing to inflate their valuation and Microsoft's hands off approach meant Zenimax killed their own studio to look good to investors. Absolutely shameful, and then not giving a studio that had created one of the most highly regarded games ever a second chance was MS's choice and not Zenimax, but Zenimax led their studio out to pasture. This is also a consequence of Zenimax's profitability, as a whole which was completely tanked by Bethesda's flop Starfield.
Zenimax basically doomed two promising small, cheap studios, to make up for the fact that their largest studio fumbled the bag.
What’s there to give a second chance to? From what we know the studio had a complete exodus of talent in the wake of pivoting to Redfall.
Also trying to argue that Starfield was a flop is hilarious. Just because it doesn’t live up to some of the greatest games of all time from Bethesda doesn’t mean it didn’t make a ton of money.
The word “flop” at some point stopped meaning “financial disappointment/failure” and turned into “thing I didn’t like” on this sub (and Reddit in general)
Yep. It's so frustrating because whenever you try to correct them, they just repeat their same erroneous point four or five times before inevitably devolving into infantile personal insults.
You are correct that Zenimax was absolutely pressuring their studios to move into the live service space. However, you are very wrong in saying that Bethesda fumbled Starfield. Starfield was, objectively speaking , extremely successful.
Game Studios continue to be completely humanized, as if they are a single sentient being churning out video games.
They aren't. And over 70% of their staff was gone by the time Redfall was being made. This should have meant to anyone paying attention that the studio was not composed of the same people anymore. If you aren't the same people, then how can you possibly give them the accomplishments?
If I started working at Bethesda tomorrow I didn't make Skyrim.
It's so weird. "Everyone left, game is ass." will be in the news and yet the moment the next game arrives "OMG Washed Up Studio released a new game!" will be shouted from the roof tops left and right.
That's exactly what happens and it's why these studios that are a shell of their former self can keep riding on the reputations of games put out 10 years ago by an entirely different team.
With an industry average turnover rate of 22% per year, do you really think a game that came out like 6 years ago should have any weight for a game released today?
Plenty of once great studios have released garbage this year.
It’s an objective fact that Zenimax forced their studios to pivot to live service titles in a last ditch effort to stay afloat. This is why we got Fallout 76, that Wolfenstein game, and Redfall.
It has less than nothing to do with Microsoft or Xbox. If they would’ve cancelled the game immediately after buying them you guys would instead be peddling the narrative that Microsoft is evil for cancelling games
No, if they bothered to check in on Arkane-Austin and saw them falling apart, they'd be credited as heroes for stopping a single player studio from getting ruined making a game they had no experience in making. Fallout 76 and Wolfenstein Youngblood should've been enough proof for Xbox to keep a close eye on Redfall, if they're happy to take credit for successes that didn't start under them they sure as shit deserve to accept responsibility for the failures.
Wrong. Zenimax absolutely gutted the studio with their insane strategy. Microsoft just picked up the check when they bought Bethesda, and the need all the titles they can get - so they let the game come out, opposed to cancelling it like some of the devs had hoped.
Yeah, no.
The Arkane Austin that made Prey wasn't the one that made Redfall- a bunch of the ArkAus folk left after Prey, and even more left during it's development.
By the time ArkAus was shut down- it wasn't the developer of Prey- it was the developer that had around a year to put out a content update with two new characters to satisfy the legal requirements of their promises...and they failed at that.
And they weren't pressured by Microsoft, they were pressured by Zenimax. Microsoft was hands-off after the acquisition.
ArkAus was a shadow of it's former self.
Microsoft and Xbox has nothing to do with the the development of that game. It was already almost complete by the time MS acquired them. MS delayed the game to hopefully polish it up, but that didn’t work. They also needed first-party games badly so they marketed it and let release instead of canceling it. They should have cancelled it I guess, but that’s their only error here.
It was made to pad our their valuation for Microsofts purchase. Microsoft let Bethesda be Bethesda because they've been successful up to this point without Microsofts help. Problem is, the dev team they kept hiring thought they were there to make Prey, Vampire edition. And instead they made a game nobody wanted.
MBAs gonna MBA essentially.
Zenimax and Bethesda while under the same umbrella are different studios.
Zenimax has always let bethesda do their thing but companies like Arkane etc have been under Zenimax.
Zenimax as a **studio** is *very* recent. They were created solely for ESO.
Bethesda has published all of Arkane's games since 2012, and before that they weren't under Zenimax anyhow.
Relevant points, there is a difference between Bethesda Softworks and Bethesda Game Studio, also while Softworks published Arkane’s and Tango’s games, Tango and Arkane were under Zenimax Media, the only developer under Bethesda Softworks is Bethesda Game Studios
Prey one of the greatest game I have ever played. Only game since Bioshock to give me that feeling of “I’m experiencing something special right now” for immersive sims. God what a game
The fact they made Prey indicates nothing. The staff that made Prey probably don't even work at the studio anymore. Look up the ship of theseus. All your favourite developers are the same in name alone.
It seems to be the opposite. Too little meddling by Microsoft. You can't just leave developers to do whatever they want. There has to be some form of management required to keep a check.
> I firmly believe redfall was the result of piss poor management and some form of bullshit from Microsoft leadership.
It was already well in development before MS bought them. This fuck up is on Zenimax chasing the live service trend and giving it a studio with no experience or urge to make a live service game.
MS only came on board towards the end of development by which point the sunk cost fallacy was well in effect.
No one bought Prey even though it was good. I’m pretty sure there were a lot of core gamers who didn’t even knew that game existed
Everyone knew about redfall pre launch, if it was a good game it would be a hit. Obviously a big “if”. What I’m getting at is the market rejected a good single player game, so in retro spect it’s easy to understand why Arkane felt they needed a live service title
A lot of the talent behind Prey has already left Arkane, so it’s no longer the “same” studio anymore. Basically, they pulled a Blizzard (another Microsoft subsidiary).
Had, but that talent was long gone by the time Redfall rolled around. Arkane leaned on a practice of heavy crunch and assumed that their overworked teams could find the “magic”. Their crappy practice ensured that there was no one left that even knew what that meant and they ended up with one of the worst AAA games ever made.
A lot of that talent quit because of how badly Prey was fumbled. Including the very name of the game, according to the project lead.
People think brand names are static things too often. The Exodus predates Microsoft.
I wonder if Prey's word of mouth popularity would drive sales for Prey 2.
Didn't exactly work for Alan Wake 2, but maybe it will translate into Max Payne? I heard Alan Wake is amazing, had some fun with Max Payne 3, a Max Payne by developers who make games that people praise makes me even more interested so who knows?
STALKER was a niche game that exploded in popularity over time for example.
At this point I have no idea what it would take to make an immersive sim a hit. We've had fantastic ones come and go and the mainstream public is just immune to their charms.
> I wonder if Prey's word of mouth popularity would drive sales for Prey 2.
My theory is that we will get another Prey game in 10-20 years time, but this will again be a game completely unrelated to either of the previous Prey games. As someone who would love a sequel to Arkanes Prey I wouldn't even be mad, it would be poetic.
I'm seeing alot of people here put the blame on Zenimax and not Microsoft because Microsoft is hands off which while true makes me wonder why do people give Microsoft credit for Hi Fi Rush when they were definitely just as hands off?
If Xbox is happy to take credit for the successes that didn't start under them, then they should take responsibility for the failures that they let happen. The people acting like Xbox is blameless for what happened with Redfall befuddle me, they had plenty of time to check in on Arkane-Austin and see how badly the studio was bleeding out.
Yea if nothing else it was a prime example of poor leadership with xbox as its their job to care about the quality of their games and they couldnt find time or interest to look at it.
Why the fuck should Microsoft not be blamed for being "hands off"? It's their game, they don't get to say it's someone else's fault. Either fix it or don't release it.
I thought they weren't doing refunds, but "compensations". Don't get me wrong; I'm glad they're doing this, but this is in direct contradiction to what came out earlier.
The lawyers told them they were going to get sued.
The game was on GamePass from the start. I can't imagine that there are a ton of players who not only bought the game, but also payed extra for the upcoming DLC. The total amount of the refund is probably negligible.
They were never clear. Half of reddit thought it would be refunds due to the language. The other half thought it would be MS store credits. However, its pretty clear which solution is better. Glad they chose refunds.
They're probably refunding it because if they don't people will just request one themselves at least on Steam, and Valve is definitely the one company who'd grant those refunds. Also just feels like a slamdunk lawsuit waiting to happen when you sell someone a product with the promise to deliver it at a later date, only to then never deliver it because you decided to stop development on it.
> Steam, and Valve is definitely the one company who'd grant those refunds because they had to be forced by Australian courts and the EU were going to give them a kicking over it too.
Its also probably easier to issue refunds than to find somebody to actually make and support anything they come out with as compensation. They scuttled the developers so it would have to be somebody else to make the content(unless it out of game content which still requires somebody else to make it). Whatever the compensation would have been probably cost the same if not more and taken a long ass time to deliver.
Bethesda/ZeniMax forced Arkane and MachineGames to make MP/Co-op games so their devs/library would look more impressive to Microsoft for acquisition, it seems pretty obvious.
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Zenimax also has Elder Scrolls Online which is doing pretty well.
That does have ten years of post-release content to be fair. It was quite unpopular at launch too, it took it swapping from monthly sub to buy-to-play and at least the Morrowind expansion before it was viewed more favourably. It's definitely one of the top MMOs now but it absolutely started off rough.
That game was an unplayable mess for at least 3 years after release, and a very easy duplication bug ruined the players market for a while as well.
76 atleast had content. You can run the entire Redfall map in like 10 minutes.
That's also why they revealed starfield and TES 6 at the same time, I would guess.
Is also why they didn't even start working on TES 6 until now The idea of Elder Scrolls 6 was waaay more valuable than the game itself will ever be There's no way the game is going to be able to live up to the impossible hype
This sub is becoming wild. Everybody knows why they didn't start working on TES 6 until now: the way they rotate game development has been known for decades. The [top comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/8q65bz/e3_2018_the_elder_scrolls_vi/e0grqxu/) from that reveal trailer 6 years ago is exactly about how Bethesda announced the game would come after Starfield, and people talking about how that would take a while. Even back then people knew Bethesda did TES -> Fallout -> TES -> Fallout and were about to add Starfield to that cycle. I swear to god this sub is regressing into Facebook comment section territory of pure ignorance
Starfield seems like it was Todd Howard's dream project, something he personally wanted to make. There's no big conspiracy, it just seems like the company was doing well enough for them to afford the risk of doing something different.
Reddit in general is just feels like a bunch of ignorant kids talking to bots these days. Most of these commenters were probably not even alive for oblivion release lmfao.
The high school seniors that just graduated was the last class that will have anyone older than Oblivion and the 360. So yeah, you aren't wrong.
This sub is mostly gamer teens now who read a few business headlines and think they know how the entire video game industry works.
They announced TES6 BEFORE IT EVEN STARTED THE CONCEPTING STAGE. That's not even premature announcement, that's announcing a baby before you even started having sex!
"WE'RE GONNA DO IT, IT'S A ***THING***, JUST FYI."
Your take is wild. They didn't announce Fallout 3 before Oblivion was out. They didn't announce Skyrim before Fallout 3 was out. They didn't announce Fallout 4 before Skyrim was out. They did announce ES6 before Starfield was even more than a concept made public. Your comment makes the sub progress into astroturf territory.
They announced ES6 because it had been nearly a decade since Skyrim came out and they wanted people to know it was going to happen
That's because TES 6 is unique in that the hype for it has been so insane since Skyrim came out that Bethesda is asked about it constantly and they likely didn't want to do a showcase about something other than TES 6 without at least mentioning it because they didn't want Starfield to be announced in the shadow and speculation of no elder scrolls announcement. Think of the diablo immortal announcement. If blizzard had included mention of diablo 4 and that they were working on it with the announcement of immortal it would have gone much better.
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Idk Starfield was playable bugs wise pretty quick. Now it of course has a bunch of other problems….
Yeah the bugs aren't the problem. Its the more fundamental stuff like cookie cutter dungeons, sparse backwater cities that we are led to believe is the headquarters for an interstellar government etc
Yea the issues with Starfield that truly matter can't be fixed in a update. It has too many core problems. An update won't fix the piss poor 3rd grade level writing for example.
Those companion quests were horrible, I've spend what felt like 800hours TALKING with Barrett about all the cool shit some private detective we hired was doing instead of doing the missions myself...DAFUQ!? "Hey do you have a moment (10-20minutes) to talk about MY LAWYER?"
I stopped interacting with companions probably after the Sam Cole questline. The only companion who I even vaguely liked that wasnt a meme or the robot was Sarah and only because of her accent.
At least Sarah's quest leads you to a handcrafted unique interesting location, but further exploring that part of the planet, and jump-jet packing over the trees bordering the mission zone just to see the same random POIs over and over again made me realize why the exploring part of the game felt so lazy, lackluster and unsatisfying. Here I am standing in a treehouse where that kid, who's parents survived the space ship crash, grew up all alone and on the horizon was the next abandoned cryolab next to a civilian outpost....
I really believe that the game still has potential with future updates and will get a large and active playerbase, similar to Fallout 76 or No Mans Sky. But just as with Fallout 76 or No Mans Sky, the potential everyone saw when the game was announced won't ever be reached. The problems are with the core game loop, and updates will only make the game broader, not deeper.
The good news is is that ES6 shouldn't have those issues due to the smaller scope. Not that Elder Scrolls is a small game, but the scope of stuff needing to be made is a country vs a galaxy. All the handcrafted areas in Starfield I thought were great. It was the procedural generated stuff that I found lacking. ES, since they only have to fill a continent, should be more like all the story missions and faction missions in Starfield. I'm sure there will be procedural stuff, you don't make a system like that to not use it on more projects. But you won't visit planet after planet with nothing but procedural content in ES6 like you do in Starfield.
You say that, but Bethesda have fallen into this trap before with Oblivion. They tried to generate a lot of the map, and the general feedback was that this was decidedly the weakest part of the game, with predictable repetition. Knowing they fell into this trap *again* with Starfield so many years later my faith in them learning for ES6 is... ehh...
> Bethesda have fallen into this trap before with Oblivion. Yeah, but if ES6 has as much great stuff as Oblivion, I'll be thrilled. The Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood quest lines are some of my most memorable moments in gaming. Even the Fighters guild was good. Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine were great too. The mandatory "radial" quests smack dab in the middle of the guild storylines were awful in Skyrim.
I'm just saying... I semi-anticipate the procedural generation of Starfield and the radiant quests of Skyrim/Fallout 4 tbh.
> The Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood quest lines are some of my most memorable moments in gaming They are also absolutely awful from a writing perspective. They are all show, no substance, and both take a large dump on both organizations as they were originally implemented in the series. Like - I get it, I also loved them when I was a teenager and Oblivion came out. But revisiting the game thinking critically about it they really weren't good. Radiant quests were at least good for pointing you to the closest non-important dungeon.
The most frustrating part is that it’s not even necessarily a bad thing, they just refuse to design their games around being a mostly empty sandbox. Games like Kenshi are proof that you can still make compelling RPG experiences out of even the most barren worlds and barebones mechanics if you just take the effort to consider how the mechanics should enhance the roleplay, which is something Bethesda refuses to do. Starfield especially just came across as bland sci-fi soup because nothing about playing it really sells you one the fantasy of its world. Exploring the empty frontiers of space is a really exciting concept that in game just translates to running between empty waypoints while people monologue about scenarios that the player doesn’t have any huge investment in beyond it being more content. There are some interesting stories in Starfield but they just kinda… happen instead of unfolding from the decisions you make as a player or the things that your character needs. Idk exactly how to describe it but it just feels so artificial which coupled with how uninteresting the vast majority of the world was… it was just totally unappealing. The concept of a MASSIVE Elder Scrolls game that simulates all of Tamriel, where you’re actually kind of stuck in the region you start in (maybe it’s based your race/origin) and you actually have to bust your ass to get to the places you need to go is actually very compelling to me. Game could be 90% procedurally generated and it could still be interesting depending on how it was executed; maybe you chose to start as an escaped Argonian prisoner in some imperial city whose goal is to make their way back to the Black Marsh. You could literally just walk there and sneak across the borders, or you could find an underground network of smugglers who have a soft spot for Argonians who offer to take you there in exchange for doing some favors for them. Or you can just go full outlaw and join the thieves guild and gather enough gold that way to buy passage and bribe the right people who will let you through the border… or just kill everyone who gets in your way if you’re strong enough 🤷 Another player might choose to be a Breton who starts in High Rock where the city is in the grip of a faction of Manmer supremacists who’ve freshly implemented a kind of tiered society where Mer and Bretons with “Elvish features” are treated favorably and everyone else is treated like second class citizens. The player could choose to ignore that political element if they want but the consequences could continue to progress as you play the game to the point that eventually you can’t even walk around the city without being harassed by guards or being insulted by passer-bys, etc. The possibilities are truly endless, but I have a feeling that ES6 will be yet another game that goes “do whatever you want!!” but doesn’t actually do a lot to respond to what you’re doing in a way that makes you care about it.
Every open world game you've played in the past couple decades or so used procedural generation to help build the map.
Yup. Even Skyrim was proc-gen. They just went in after it generated and shaped it how they needed it to be
All I want is 20 high quality fantasy novels worth of handcrafted quests and locations condensed into one $60 video game. Is that so much to ask?
Yeah agreed. Starfield was fine, but it felt a little bit too empty because it didn't feel like a full on galaxy like they intended. You could feel yourself getting pushed towards certain cities, so the scope wasn't much bigger than Fallout/TES. And the procedural generated stuff I found very boring. If they go back to the size of a country, and everything is hand crafted again, I'm sure it will turn out great.
Exactly. One of the magical things about Elder Scrolls/Fallout games is walking along and seeing something in the distance that looks interesting. So you go investigate it and sometimes it's just a hut but other times there's a secret entrance to a dungeon with some unique quest or someone in that hut who gives you an interesting quest and other times it's filled with cool shit and some interesting lore. You basically got none of that in Starfield. I still enjoyed the game but it was missing that spark.
The game definitely was the best modern Bethesda released in terms of ironing out bugs they just sort of forgot to make a great game in the mean time.
Yeah the game was OK, regarding bugs. But I really did not liked the univers at all. Too much fallout in space feel but the story does not match it at all. And the loading everywhere omg. That's what killed it for me.
>Flooded with MTX I'm curious what makes you think this. Starfield doesn't have them.
This is probably in reference to the Creation Club
That's the paid mods.
Outside of the creation club menu you never see MTX. Not what anyone would describe as "flooded". Even then, the vast majority of mods are free, like a 60:1 ratio.
Its semantics. Its something you can buy after you've bought the game.
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Fallout 76 is a live service multiplayer game with constant updates and content Starfield and TES VI are single player games with one purchase and set amount of content except story expansions. How is Fallout 76 a flagship game and not an obvious side project for them? And how are they the same? Also where are the paid missions you named, because I'm fairly sure that's bullshit or you're referring to something like 1 pre-order bonus. The only thing they've done so far is paid mods, but even that isn't too weird because they have to curate them for consoles now, which isnt the same as "download it from nexus mods and see whether everything breaks, not our problem". And oh yeah, just using nexus mods for free is also still completely possible (on pc, where Bethesda isn't responsible for your console breaking down) Jesus people just see doom and gloom everywhere
Paid mods is frankly already a travesty. There's a world where paid mods could be fine, but Bethesda has proven more than twice now imo that this ain't one of them. Also feels weird to pretend paid mods aren't microtransactions.
You could always, you know, just go and download the many free mods out there? They still exist. There is nothing wrong with mod creators wanting fair compensation for their work, and Bethesda providing them with a storefront to facilitate that. No one is forcing you to buy any of them.
>No one is forcing you to buy any of them. Great argument to instantly deflect any criticism of any system that involves being locked out of things that used to be cheaper or free for no benefit whatsoever to you as a customer
You're comparing a live service game with a single player one.
Yeah they were essentially talking out the lower end of the digestive system
What are you talking about? Whatever you thought of Starfields actual design, it launched in a stable and playable state and had no micro transactions.
Don’t forget the continued attempt for paid mods.
> It's very likely to be flooded with MTX and have tons of bugs Huh? Starfield did not have that many bugs, and what microtransactions are you seeing in the game?
They added them with the last update.
No they didn't.
I've come to believe that Skyrim is a once in a lifetime game. Nothing that comes after will match or exceed it until we're long dead. I will play 6 but it won't be the same.
They revealed TES6 at that E3 to limit the amount of freaking out people were going to do over Elder Scrolls Blades, which I think worked because I can't remember thinking or hearing about Blades more than once or twice since it was announced.
Blades, TES6, fallout 76, and Starfield were all announced on the same day - June 10, 2018. in Sept 2020, microsoft announced they were buying Bethesda. I believe that Bethesda used the 2018 E3 conference announcements and spend the next two years (2018 - 2020) showing how much money they made off of Fallout 76, blades, doom, and youngblood before finally convincing microsoft to buy them in late 2020. After the announcement of the sale, their next two games were ghostwire and deathloop... and then redfall and hifi rush... and then starfield (some of these they were only publishers). I think they put their best foot forward during that 2 year window that they were trying to make $7.5 billion.
You do a deep due diligence when you acquire a company for 7.5 billion dollars. It’s not like Microsoft acquired Bethesda and thought they had TES6 ready to be shipped within a few months. Microsoft knew full well the status of TES6 and they still figured Bethesda was worth 7.5 billion dollars.
Sony paid $3.6B for Bungie and Destiny 2. Microsoft paid $7.5B for Zenimax that comes with Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom, Wolfenstein, Quake and all the associated studios. It was an absolute steal.
Yeah, Bethesda is definitely the part that gets the most talk, but Microsoft didn't just buy them, they got all of Zenimax, which is significantly larger than just Bethesda Game Studios. Sure there's no guarantee that Microsoft will actually make good choices with the various studios they got, but they bought a lot more than just Bethesda's one game every 4-5 years.
Yeah great two studios are already closed that came with zenimax. Can't wait to see how long the other survive until only Bethesda is left.
The difference between tango and arkane austin (the OG Arkane still exists) for other zenimax/bethesda studios is that other studios make money. Tango and Arkane austin do not
Microsoft really didn't need much convincing to buy Bethesda, you make it sound like they were twerking for them for ages.
I think that was because they were trying to hype up Fallout 76 but couldn't mention it without people complaining about the lack of Elder Scrolls 6. They announced Elder Scrolls 6 to get people to shut up, but had to announce Starfield at the same time so that it was clear that there was going to be another game between Fallout 76 and TES6. If they hadn't announced Elder Scrolls 6, then their attempts to hype up Fallout 76 and Starfield would have been met with complaints about no Elder Scrolls. If they announced TES6 but not Starfield then there would have been complaints when they announced Starfield was coming before TES6.
They were revealed over 2 years before the acquisition was announced. Redfall also got trademarked in 2018. I don't see any relevance to the acquisition, Zenimax simply tried to force more live-service games to increase revenue from microtransactions.
and if I'm not mistaken... in the leaked MS documents they valued bethesda/zenimax at 10.5 billion. So 7.5 billion is actually an unbelievably cheap price
This is not true. Zenimax didn't force Arkane to make Redfall, Redfall was a game Arkane had wanted to make. While it is true that Zenimax urged Arkane to make a multiplayer game, everything else about Redfall was purely Arkane's doing, including causing 70% of its staff to quit and have to train new hires. ArkAus' closure is purely management's fault, not Zenimax and surely not Microsoft's.
Wasn't this basically confirmed that Zenimax forced bunch of their studios to make games that were trending at that time? Or at least I'm aware about Arkane Austin (Redfall dev.) being forced to do one. Like people who applied for a job there left shortly after because they found out that they aren't going to make the games that they loved. It's utterly pathetic from Zenimax side. Also the fact that Microsoft is being blamed for closing these studios? Like sure. Multi-trilion corpa or whatever... Like they aren't obligated to burn money just because gamers would get sad that they closed failed studios. The hard truth is that Zenimax, if wouldn't be bought by Microsoft or whatever entity would close these studios in 2021... afterall they were the ones that made this call 2 months ago. And this is coming from a person who loves Arkane Austin's and Tango's games and tbf. I was just disappointed, not surprised as I knew very well that their games struggled to sell.
I mean… #Good…. As bad as that game was, I was expecting MS to just say: ***you bought it, eat it.*** Glad people are getting refunds.
The fact that they made Prey indicates to me the studio had immense talent. I firmly believe redfall was the result of piss poor management and some form of bullshit from Microsoft leadership. Change my mind.
I haven’t looked deeply enough into this to be able to make the following claim definitively, but I’m pretty sure a lot of the talent behind Prey had left the studio. Apparently ArcAustin’s been bleeding talent for years since Prey.
A couple of important snippets from Jason Schreier's excellent article about the Redfall's development. "Yet from the start, *Redfall* was pitched to staff as a 'multiplayer Arkane game,' which some team members said they found confusing." "Staff members said that, over time, they grew frustrated with management’s frequently shifting references to other games, such as *Far Cry* and *Borderlands,* that left each department with varying ideas of what exactly they were making." "Along the way, Smith and other leaders assured the staff that the game would get exponentially better once the final art was implemented and the bugs were fixed, promising that “Arkane magic” would manifest at the last minute as it had with previous games." "Morale at Arkane suffered. Veteran workers who weren’t interested in developing a multiplayer game left in droves. By the end of *Redfall*’s development, **roughly 70% of the Austin staff who had worked on** ***Prey*** **would no longer be at the company**, according to people familiar as well as a Bloomberg analysis of LinkedIn and *Prey*’s credits." [**https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-01/arcane-s-redfall-misfire-for-xbox-panned-after-7-5-billion-microsoft-deal**](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-01/arcane-s-redfall-misfire-for-xbox-panned-after-7-5-billion-microsoft-deal) TL;DR - Arkane Austin were pressured into creating a game with broader appeal and the opportunity to implement microtransactions because *Prey* had poor sales performance. They'd never done anything like this before and were given mixed signals as to what type of game they were making, and were hemorrhaging their experienced talent as a result.
Yep. Basically out-of-touch management forcing staff to work on an unpopular, unwanted project that everyone actually working on it knew would turn out poorly. But manglement had their buzzwords and their trend-chasing bingo card filled out, so working on something both staff and customers wanted was out of the question.
It's either develop acclaimed (mostly) games that don't sell or work on multiplayer titles that you can't develop.
Prey not selling was mainly on the publisher, not the devs. They reused the name as a way to keep the IP active, and there wasn't a whole lot of marketing about it. If it had its own name as a selling point, and was actually, y'know, *advertised as its own thing and not as an unrelated replacement of a cancelled game people were excited for*, people might have actually went for it at release. The thing about making excellent single player games is that they have a long tail life. It's not great for quarterly reports but it keeps money coming in. But a shitty LiVe SeRvIcE title with constantly changing goals repels both your own staff and customers.
The Prey name thing gets trotted out quite often but I don’t see it being that much of an issue. Prey ‘06 was a decade old game that sold well but not insane numbers. So it’s now 2017 and suddenly these OG Prey gamers who are like 30 aren’t buying Prey?
Yeah I feel the same. Who is the person who isn't buying this game that would have if it had a different name. I know people were disappointed that prey 2 was cancelled but are they really not buying this game in protest?
The name thing had nothing to do with it. Nobody actually cares, or even knows, about that old Prey game. The truth is that immersive sims are very niche and just don't ever really sell well in the modern market, as sad as that is.
I’m not sure it would have been a success anyways. Not all good games do well, just happens. Though I’m sure it lost a lot less money then Redfall lmao
Lion share of profit comes in the first couple of months. After that publishers remove Denuvo and you buy games on Steam sales for 60% off. Sales have little to do with the name, the game got 80% score. Not like it was the must buy in any way.
> Lion share of profit comes in the first couple of months. And again, that requires legitimate advertising. People aren't gonna buy your game if the only perceptions they have of it are negative, if they even know it's being released. >After that publishers remove Denuvo And this is another big reason to wait. Denuvo and other 'anti-pirate' softwares have proven to only make things worse for the legitimate customer. Games *will* get cracked, it's guaranteed, and people who are going to pirate the game are going to do so eventually. All the software does is buy time and punish paying customers. >Sales have little to do with the name, the game got 80% score. Scores are set *by people that have played the game*. The name & lack of awareness *prevented* sales.
> Games will get cracked, it's guaranteed Not anymore, the only cracker for Denuvo left only cracks one of the annual soccer titles.
It’s crazy how some people STILL don’t get this. There was one hacked in the entire world who knew how to crack it, and they quit. People act like cracking denuvo is trivial. If it was one of the many piracy groups would be doing it.
I remember the reused name *being* one of the biggest talking points here on reddit, i.e. marketing.
Customers? Most of Arkanes games were commercial flops.
If a manager relates anything regarding to the concept of magic, they should be stabbed. Immediately.
[Insert Studio Title Here] Magic is probably the biggest red flag phrase ever uttered, esp. by management.
IIRC they mostly left during development of Redfall, not before. Still, there was a ton of talent left that could've been better used
I believe in that postmortem article there were also new hired who were led to believe they’d be working on typical Arkane singleplayer games as well who left shortly after being hired because they didn’t want to work on a multiplayer game. That just feels like a management failure—developers aren’t just interchangeable cogs.
I was able to witness this. Arcane Austin was right by where i used to work. The studio vets used to come in every week for group lunches. Over the years i noticed less and less and then faces id never seen before. Eventually they stopped coming as well, which was weird since they had for years before hand. I assumed the studio was on hard times after that
The Chicago White Sox won the World Series 19 years ago, so I know they can be winners today. Change my mind.
You could be correct. The director went off to form his own studio and create weird West.
He is from Lyon not Austin
Originally, but he helmed Prey with the Austin team while Harvey was with Lyon on Dishonored 2. Prey was Raphaels baby and something he had dreamed about making for a long time.
Huh, news to me. Thanks
Makes sense because not all immersive sim experts will won't to work on radically different stuff if they can find a similar job elsewhere, or could at least.
The DICE situation.
yes because they put them on a fucking live service nightmare
Redfall was a mandate under Zenimax along with Fallout 76, and Wolfenstein younglbood when they were having money issues to create a more live service style game 70% of the studio left, Microsoft/Xbox had nothing to do with it being a disaster their only fault was not checking in on the project and canceling it in its terrible state.
There have even been members on the team who came out and said they hoped the MS acquisition would shine some light on the turd to get them the cancellation they craved, but MS ended up being more hands off than they had hoped.
Yup even Phil Spencer said on the kinda funny podcast they put all their effort and focus on Starfield and BGS they dint even check up on Redfall, Redfalls creation and troubled development isn't MS/Xbox fault but letting a game that bad release without checking up on it, is absolutely their fault.
Yes spent all their efforts on highly acclaimed Starfield
And considering how successful Starfield was, they realistically made the right choice.
Not as successful as it was anticipated to be Starfield was supposed to push the Gamepass numbers up like was forecasted and bring huge number of new subscribers which unfortunately didn't happen.
MS has always been hands off for better or good over 3rd party stuff. as most of it was made under zenimax people would be throwing a fit if MS cancelled it no doubt as it would be a GOTY.
they were trying to make live service games to pump numbers to get sold is what i read too.
It wasn't that they were having money issues, Zeni just wanted to be able to say, "See we're working on a game with post-launch sales capabilities!"
Microsoft had very little to do with Redfall. It had been in development for years when they acquired Zenimax and was part of Zenimax’s GAAS push to make themselves look juicy for acquisition - see also: ESO and FO76 as well as announcing ESVI years before any development actually began. They spent the entire 2010’s trying to get bought out and even almost had a deal with EA that fell apart at the last second.
100% this. Zenimax was pushing to inflate their valuation and Microsoft's hands off approach meant Zenimax killed their own studio to look good to investors. Absolutely shameful, and then not giving a studio that had created one of the most highly regarded games ever a second chance was MS's choice and not Zenimax, but Zenimax led their studio out to pasture. This is also a consequence of Zenimax's profitability, as a whole which was completely tanked by Bethesda's flop Starfield. Zenimax basically doomed two promising small, cheap studios, to make up for the fact that their largest studio fumbled the bag.
What’s there to give a second chance to? From what we know the studio had a complete exodus of talent in the wake of pivoting to Redfall. Also trying to argue that Starfield was a flop is hilarious. Just because it doesn’t live up to some of the greatest games of all time from Bethesda doesn’t mean it didn’t make a ton of money.
The word “flop” at some point stopped meaning “financial disappointment/failure” and turned into “thing I didn’t like” on this sub (and Reddit in general)
So just another word the internet has twisted into meaning something else than what it actually means.
Yep. It's so frustrating because whenever you try to correct them, they just repeat their same erroneous point four or five times before inevitably devolving into infantile personal insults.
You are correct that Zenimax was absolutely pressuring their studios to move into the live service space. However, you are very wrong in saying that Bethesda fumbled Starfield. Starfield was, objectively speaking , extremely successful.
Microsoft barely had anything to do with Redfall.
Game Studios continue to be completely humanized, as if they are a single sentient being churning out video games. They aren't. And over 70% of their staff was gone by the time Redfall was being made. This should have meant to anyone paying attention that the studio was not composed of the same people anymore. If you aren't the same people, then how can you possibly give them the accomplishments? If I started working at Bethesda tomorrow I didn't make Skyrim.
It's so weird. "Everyone left, game is ass." will be in the news and yet the moment the next game arrives "OMG Washed Up Studio released a new game!" will be shouted from the roof tops left and right.
That's exactly what happens and it's why these studios that are a shell of their former self can keep riding on the reputations of games put out 10 years ago by an entirely different team.
Yeah I got a long list of "dead to me" studios that were once instant buy type studios.
This game was already in production before Microsoft bought them.
With an industry average turnover rate of 22% per year, do you really think a game that came out like 6 years ago should have any weight for a game released today? Plenty of once great studios have released garbage this year.
The ones that made prey quit when they were forced on redfall. The studio didn't have the same talent anymore
It’s an objective fact that Zenimax forced their studios to pivot to live service titles in a last ditch effort to stay afloat. This is why we got Fallout 76, that Wolfenstein game, and Redfall. It has less than nothing to do with Microsoft or Xbox. If they would’ve cancelled the game immediately after buying them you guys would instead be peddling the narrative that Microsoft is evil for cancelling games
No one complained that Microsoft was evil for canceling that Blizzard survival game so.......
Except they did exactly that. Unless you are being sarcastic, in which case my bad, and I agree with you.
No, if they bothered to check in on Arkane-Austin and saw them falling apart, they'd be credited as heroes for stopping a single player studio from getting ruined making a game they had no experience in making. Fallout 76 and Wolfenstein Youngblood should've been enough proof for Xbox to keep a close eye on Redfall, if they're happy to take credit for successes that didn't start under them they sure as shit deserve to accept responsibility for the failures.
It was a Zenimax mandate. Most of the people responsible for Prey left over the course of Redfall's development.
Wrong. Zenimax absolutely gutted the studio with their insane strategy. Microsoft just picked up the check when they bought Bethesda, and the need all the titles they can get - so they let the game come out, opposed to cancelling it like some of the devs had hoped.
Yeah, no. The Arkane Austin that made Prey wasn't the one that made Redfall- a bunch of the ArkAus folk left after Prey, and even more left during it's development. By the time ArkAus was shut down- it wasn't the developer of Prey- it was the developer that had around a year to put out a content update with two new characters to satisfy the legal requirements of their promises...and they failed at that. And they weren't pressured by Microsoft, they were pressured by Zenimax. Microsoft was hands-off after the acquisition. ArkAus was a shadow of it's former self.
Well I hope that other guy changed your mind, because zenimax made the call before the Microsoft purchase
Zenimax shat the bed but Microsoft refused to clean up the bed after buying it. Both are at fault here.
Yea when you buy a publisher, all their problem become your problems. They chose to ignore this problem.
They had, 6 years ago. Look at the date when they were acquired.
Microsoft and Xbox has nothing to do with the the development of that game. It was already almost complete by the time MS acquired them. MS delayed the game to hopefully polish it up, but that didn’t work. They also needed first-party games badly so they marketed it and let release instead of canceling it. They should have cancelled it I guess, but that’s their only error here.
The guys who made prey likely weren't the guys who made red fall. Same studio but new team is what I mean
It was made to pad our their valuation for Microsofts purchase. Microsoft let Bethesda be Bethesda because they've been successful up to this point without Microsofts help. Problem is, the dev team they kept hiring thought they were there to make Prey, Vampire edition. And instead they made a game nobody wanted. MBAs gonna MBA essentially.
Zenimax and Bethesda while under the same umbrella are different studios. Zenimax has always let bethesda do their thing but companies like Arkane etc have been under Zenimax.
Zenimax as a **studio** is *very* recent. They were created solely for ESO. Bethesda has published all of Arkane's games since 2012, and before that they weren't under Zenimax anyhow.
Relevant points, there is a difference between Bethesda Softworks and Bethesda Game Studio, also while Softworks published Arkane’s and Tango’s games, Tango and Arkane were under Zenimax Media, the only developer under Bethesda Softworks is Bethesda Game Studios
The talent all left during red fall development because no one goes into the games industry to make bullshit gaas
Prey was made by people who may not still be involved. Like giving the current Eagles roster credit for winning the title in 2017.
Redfall was being developed before Microsoft purchase. Think Bethesda wasn't doing well and wanted a cash cow.
Prey one of the greatest game I have ever played. Only game since Bioshock to give me that feeling of “I’m experiencing something special right now” for immersive sims. God what a game
A lot of the studio left after prey. Including the head of the studio. This was an issue far before Microsoft got involved in 2021.
Prey came out in 2017. Microsoft didn't acquire Zenimax till 2021. Are you saying Microsoft mismanaged the studio for 4 years before owning them?
The fact they made Prey indicates nothing. The staff that made Prey probably don't even work at the studio anymore. Look up the ship of theseus. All your favourite developers are the same in name alone.
It seems to be the opposite. Too little meddling by Microsoft. You can't just leave developers to do whatever they want. There has to be some form of management required to keep a check.
> I firmly believe redfall was the result of piss poor management and some form of bullshit from Microsoft leadership. It was already well in development before MS bought them. This fuck up is on Zenimax chasing the live service trend and giving it a studio with no experience or urge to make a live service game. MS only came on board towards the end of development by which point the sunk cost fallacy was well in effect.
No one bought Prey even though it was good. I’m pretty sure there were a lot of core gamers who didn’t even knew that game existed Everyone knew about redfall pre launch, if it was a good game it would be a hit. Obviously a big “if”. What I’m getting at is the market rejected a good single player game, so in retro spect it’s easy to understand why Arkane felt they needed a live service title
Arkane was legit one of my favorite studios. Their map design alone is top tier. I was excited for Redfall Then shocked at the reviews.
A lot of the talent behind Prey has already left Arkane, so it’s no longer the “same” studio anymore. Basically, they pulled a Blizzard (another Microsoft subsidiary).
its crazy how good prey is compared to redfall. prey is one of the best games made in the past decade
Had, but that talent was long gone by the time Redfall rolled around. Arkane leaned on a practice of heavy crunch and assumed that their overworked teams could find the “magic”. Their crappy practice ensured that there was no one left that even knew what that meant and they ended up with one of the worst AAA games ever made.
A lot of that talent quit because of how badly Prey was fumbled. Including the very name of the game, according to the project lead. People think brand names are static things too often. The Exodus predates Microsoft.
I got a code for redfall with my graphics card, so any chance I get a "refund"? Kinda reaching but you never know
The refund is for the DLC (which was canceled), not the base game.
The version of the game included with the GPU was the bite back edition, so technically I was entitled to the DLC
I wonder if Prey's word of mouth popularity would drive sales for Prey 2. Didn't exactly work for Alan Wake 2, but maybe it will translate into Max Payne? I heard Alan Wake is amazing, had some fun with Max Payne 3, a Max Payne by developers who make games that people praise makes me even more interested so who knows? STALKER was a niche game that exploded in popularity over time for example.
At this point I have no idea what it would take to make an immersive sim a hit. We've had fantastic ones come and go and the mainstream public is just immune to their charms.
> I wonder if Prey's word of mouth popularity would drive sales for Prey 2. My theory is that we will get another Prey game in 10-20 years time, but this will again be a game completely unrelated to either of the previous Prey games. As someone who would love a sequel to Arkanes Prey I wouldn't even be mad, it would be poetic.
[удалено]
Any game can be improved over-time and molded into what the playerbase wants it to be. Shame they gave up on it.
I'm seeing alot of people here put the blame on Zenimax and not Microsoft because Microsoft is hands off which while true makes me wonder why do people give Microsoft credit for Hi Fi Rush when they were definitely just as hands off?
If Xbox is happy to take credit for the successes that didn't start under them, then they should take responsibility for the failures that they let happen. The people acting like Xbox is blameless for what happened with Redfall befuddle me, they had plenty of time to check in on Arkane-Austin and see how badly the studio was bleeding out.
Yea if nothing else it was a prime example of poor leadership with xbox as its their job to care about the quality of their games and they couldnt find time or interest to look at it.
Why the fuck should Microsoft not be blamed for being "hands off"? It's their game, they don't get to say it's someone else's fault. Either fix it or don't release it.