A new report suggests that many of the developers working on Redfall wanted Microsoft to cancel the game before it was released. Redfall received mixed reviews when it launched in May 2023, and is currently one of the lowest-rated AAA games of 2023.
The Xbox Series X version of Redfall has a score of 56 on Metacritic, compared to 54 for the PC version. User ratings are much lower, as the Xbox Series X and PC versions of Redfall have player ratings of 3.5 and 2.1, respectively, on Metacritic. Redfall players have encountered various issues that have resulted in the game bombing on Steam. Now, a new report says the developer wants Microsoft to cancel the game.
According to a new report from Bloomberg, Redfall started out as a multiplayer game under ZeniMax with a heavy focus on real-time service elements. In the report, a number of reasons were given for Redfall’s state at launch, including a lack of clear direction and an understaffed development team. It noted that by the end of Redfall’s development, roughly 70 percent of Prey’s staff had left Arkane Austin, and filling vacant positions would also be a challenge.
Microsoft bought ZeniMax in 2021, and some employees reportedly hope it will cancel Redfall or at least allow them to reboot the game as single-player. However, the report claims that Microsoft has been rather laissez-faire, allowing ZeniMax-owned studios to operate as usual. Bloomberg also mentioned that Microsoft canceled the PlayStation version of Redfall that was reportedly in development, making it an Xbox Series X and PC exclusive.
There’s a ton of other information in the report, including plans for a major microtransaction that wasn’t canceled until 2021. While Redfall started out as an online service title, it looks like there were a number of other factors that contributed to the game’s poor launch, with a lack of staff being a major issue.
Due to the response it received at launch, Redfall has been outside the top 50 most played games on the Xbox console, albeit only for a month. Redfall has a strong focus on co-op play, but it doesn’t look like users are interested in playing the game, even though it’s available for free on Xbox Game Pass. Steam’s numbers aren’t much better either, with just 73 players playing Redfall at the time of writing, according to SteamDB.
Redfall is out now on PC and Xbox Series X/S.