Microsoft Closes Redfall Developer Arkane Austin, Hi-Fi Rush Developer Tango Gameworks, and More in Devastating Cuts at Bethesda

Hi-Fi rush comes out of nowhere to massive critical acclaim just to be shut down anyway because Starfield sucked ass. Why people ever do business with these shitass publishers I'll never understand

Because the indie space is also a graveyard. Investors are increasingly wary of funding anything but a "guarantee" and plenty of studios have had to shutter because the funding they were promised was rescinded.

The major publishers are at least a paycheck that can keep a studio going for another year or two.
- Because the indie space is also a graveyard. Investors are increasingly wary of funding anything but a “guarantee” and plenty of studios have had to shutter because the funding they were promised was rescinded.
  
  Maybe gaming has become too bloated as a concept if no company can ever produce a product with their own money any more, instead always listening entirely to investor cash.
- Taking a look at big-cash high profile releases like Redfall and Starfield…is “guaranteed failure” what they’re going for? Because those indie games were pretty much the main reason I kept subscribing to game pass.
Remember that the people actually doing the work don't decide who to make deals with.

> Tango makes a great game
> Put it day one on Game Pass
> Close the studio when it doesn't meet sale targets

Corp. logic truly is something else.

Meanwhile Larian studio reminding everyone that a good way to make money and avoid layoffs is to be nimble and make good games.

Big Corps sees nimble and good studio making a good game, starts layoffs immediately.

The real murderers are the people that sell their studio to a big publisher. They immediately seal the fate of their teams. They will have layoffs eventually...
- I love Larian and am ride or die with Swen et al. Have been ever since Divine Divinity was "we have Diablo at home" but ended up being a shockingly good (for its time) hybrid ARPG/CRPG.
  
  But Larian are very much not the example of "how to do business". Like Digital Extremes, they are a "legacy" studio that is INCREDIBLY lucky to have survived. Larian themselves had to deal with really shitty publisher deals (Beyond Divinity and I think also Divinity 2?) and games so bad it almost killed the studio (even Mortismal himself will acknowledge that Divinity 2 was a trash fire before the DLC... and was still a mess after). It was mostly "lucking out" and embracing Kickstarter before everyone hated it that saved them. And... Dragon Commander still got close.
  
  And you know what has REALLY made them stable? That's right. A deal with a major company to work on one of the most famous IPs in gaming (tabletop and video) history.
  
  Larian are smart to try to maintain their size and not overly grow. But, like countless game devs have said and gotten shouted down for, they are far from "typical" and got REALLY lucky. Hell, Swen himself has mentioned the same in between the blurbs that outlets love to reference.
- You know, Hi Fi Rush is a good game, yet Tango still got axed because "fuck them". Larian wasn't nimble with BG3 either, they were thorough
Hmmm it's almost like Jim Ryan was on to something when he said gamepass wasn't good for the industry and publishers didn't like it during the antitrust trial with Microsoft.

It blows my fucking mind how stupid some people are just to be able to play the next rehashed bullshit CoD on gamepass instead of paying $70 a year for the same garbage.
Yeah did someone just run or interpret reports incorrectly? If a person subscribes to Game Pass and plays Hi Fi Rush for X months, I'd consider that a sale.
- If they play it exclusively, sure. But people play tons of games on Gamepass. HiFi Rush and a dozen other games splitting that $15/month/account is a lot less rosy.
  
  I've had Gamepass since the beginning, and since it was launched it I've bought maybe 1 or 2 Xbox games that weren't on gamepass, whereas I used to average 2-3 a month. My overall spending on games has dropped massively since getting gamepass - especially on Xbox.

You close Tango the developers behind your only recent good game, but keep 343 open. Ok Phil.

Pentiment and Psychonauts were great too so RIP to those studios 🫠
Most of the upper eschalon of 343 have left or were kicked out over the last year, including some of the worst offenders who drove the creation of the crap we've had recently such as Kiki Wolf kill.

It seems like they're internally rebuilding 343 because they know how much of a powerhouse that IP can be if done right. I'm not optimistic about the next Halo, but cautiously hopeful now at least.
- I doubt it is even thoughts over how powerful Halo is as an IP. I would be shocked if MS corporate hadn't realized that any 343 Halo is going to get shit on because "this isn't Bungie". And people hate 343 enough that firing them and pushing the leads out won't raise any red flags.
  
  But yeah. Look at how much damage control MS did when they were releasing fucking Pentiment on switch (look, I love that game with all my heart but you know things are fucked when people remember it exists). There is zero chance 343 "closes" until the next full generation... probably that gen's refresh SKU consoles. Because it would instantly be interpreted as "xbox is dead".
  
  But gutting Bethesda? We already see people in this very thread talking about how it is good because they didn't like a game one of the studios did.
- Don’t get my hopes up.
  
  If halo infinite had been a well balanced Battle Royale game… I’d probably have thrown away everything I love due to overplaying a damn game.
  
  I’m just so sick of multiplayer shooters. The repetition didn’t seem so bad when I was young, but now it just numbs my brain.
  
  But BR is the perfect combo of “my squad vs the world” that you get in a PVE coop, but also the rush of beating real life opponents that makes you keep coming back.
  
  Warzone is all my friends play now, but it’s gotten so stale that no one really pushes to squad up too frequently.
  
  Sorry for the tangent rant.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Am I the only one that felt Hi-fi Rush was a disappointment? I played plenty of rhythm games and Hi-fi Rush just felt off throughout, landing beats didn't feel satisfying and it felt off sync at timee. The story was well I can see people liking it but it felt too Disney-ish and cringe for me. I couldn't get past playing it after the 2nd level.

It's an interesting concept but I can't call it a good game.

Arkane- I mean, yeah Redfall was a clunker but Dishonored, Deathloop, and Prey all did pretty well I thought... though I suppose the two Wolfenstein games they did were kinda trash so there is a bit of falloff between the "glory days" and now.

Tango- Hi-Fi Rush was a bop, and Ghostwire did well enough I thought. Not seeing a good reason here.

Alpha Dog - Mighty Doom? Okay thats a fair closure.

--

prioritizing high-impact titles and further investing in Bethesda’s portfolio of blockbuster games

Chasing blockbusters is gonna fuck them up but I suppose more room in the lower weight classes isn't bad for gamers since it lets indies and others who aren't the big boys shine, and lord knows thats been wild over the past year'ish.

Arcane austin was already killed by the development of redfall. Most of the talent responsible for making dishonered and prey the games they were left during development of redfall. If arcane austin went back to making immersive sims instead of closing, it would be a new team making it, with little help from the pedegree implied by arcane's legacy.

Keep in mind however that arcane was two studios, the main studio in lyon france, and the other in austin texas. Dishonered was developed jointly. Dishonored 2 was lyon, pray was austin, and deathloop was lyon.

The lyon studio still exists. They are continuing to make games. The only thing announced from arcane is the marvel's blade game. Not optimistic, but arcane may still be around a while yet.
but Dishonored, Deathloop, and Prey all did pretty well I thought

I thought Arkane Austin (the closed one) was only Prey of those. Which is a shame, because Prey was utterly fantastic.
- It is. Lots of "gamers" can't be fucked learning the difference between Austin and arkane, it's like how there's people who think bioware Montreal is the same as Edmonton or rockstar north is the same as san Diego when north makes GTA and the other red dead. Generally gamers don't care what studio does what just the first part of its name. Arkane Lyon are developing blade and that's still in progress.
Depending on who you ask, Deathloop was also a flop.
- Not am Austin game though.

Seeing Tango go is actually hurtful. Hi-fi rush was a great IP and had the potential for a great sequel if given the chance.

(I feel they wrapped it up nicely but left it open enough for a sequel.)

I hope the employees can continue making great games elsewhere but it's sad we will never see them develop the IP further.

Damn, they shut down Tango? Shiji Mikami can't catch a break.

Yeah the studio put out nothing but nice games. Sure, Ghostwire in particular wasn't stellar, but it was also enjoyable and pretty well done. Evil Within was dorky, but in just the right way. Hi-Fi was phenomenal, and that alone should have seen them physically behead every single higher manager at Bethesda before they tough anyone at Tango.

But alas, apparently if it ain't Fallout: Ghostwire or Fallout: Hi-Fi, then it doesn't matter. Manager bonuses ain't going to pay themselves (hrm... come to think of it, they do?), line has to go up!
- The interesting thing is, werent they releasing Hi Fi Rush on PS5?

I'm honestly ready to not support Xbox anymore after this. They've been non-stop fumbling the ball with game releases this generation. Hi-Fi Rush was the first game that came out that I felt was phenomenal and such a breathe of fresh air, and they just straight killed the studio anyways. Killing studios that make good games is not how you foster a gaming platform people want to be part of.

I never played Hi-Fi rush, Redfall, Mighty Doom, or The Evil Within. That said it looks like Tango hit their sales and quality strides. Alpha Dog and their Mighty Doom shit-ware deserves the dust bin and closure.

As cold and callous as this all sounds, I read about the Redfall development and it was leadership start to finish on that disaster. The employees, even at Alpha Dog, don't deserve this treatment. Dinga Bakaba from Arkane Lyon stated it perfectly

Don't throw us into gold fever gambits, don't use us as strawmen for miscalculations/blind spots, don't make our work environments darwinist jungles. You say we make you proud when we make a good game. Make us proud when times are tough. We know you can, we seen it before.

Fuck me, this part hurts the most, and I highly recommend anyone who didn't read the article at least look at what was said here. Everyone knows damn well that the corporation has the ability to flourish in keeping all the talented workers who got fucked by shitty leadership, instead the leadership will fail upward and keep ruining projects. Companies have so many chances to really disrupt and show the world a better way and they continually take shallow short sighted routes to cheap monetary victory, discarding humanity along the way. Fuck companies.

What the fuck? I understand Arkane Austin since they dropped the ball, but why Tango Gameworks? I was secretly hoping they'd make another game like Hi-Fi Rush...

Robert Altman continues to fuck people with that sale

From the grave
- I’m not gonna lie I found he died today when I was double-checking the spelling with a quick google. I then had to check the timeline to make sure he was actually involved in the sale.
  
  Basically selling user data from BNET didn’t work out and after the year of flops the board got antsy. Still blame Altman tho.

Attention laid off workers from the gaming industry:

I'm one hundred percent ready for working, complete games, that don't require subscriptions, and can't be bricked remotely. Make them, and I will buy.

I will buy your products. I will buy them instead of the product being churned out by the companies that cut you.

Cool but most indie devs don't have the capital to fund the development. They want to make those games, but they have to partner with publishers so they can afford to buy stuff like food and rent while developing before they make any sales.
The Indie scene releases a dozen of these every day. The problem is there's actually too much and most of these fail to ever find an audience.
I am going to pretend you didn't mean it this way but that REALLY comes across as telling people who lost their jobs that they deserve it because they didn't meet your requirements (that weren't even true back in the day of DOS and BBSes...)

Please.. fuck right off with that. The devs at Arkane Austin or Tango aren't making the decision to add a battlepass or to release a game before it is "done". They are doing what management requires of them. The same management that then fires them to make sure that the overall branch of the company turns a profit.

You are kicking people when they are down.
- I agree with your statement. However, what I believe the original comment was saying is that if the developers who have lost their jobs were to get together and make a game as they describe, then they would buy it. The malice was directed at Microsoft and so on.
  
  At least, that's how I read it...
Wow, what hollow platitude
- Gul Du J’bkat
Laid off workers don't have the ability to choose these options though. You're talking about management/marketing decisions.

If you ever wonder why gamers buy Playstation and not Xbox, here is your reason.

MS have no idea what they're doing with gaming. There will be no The Last of Us or God of War coming from them. They don't want to sell you games. They want to sell you GamePass. They don't want you to have a great time. They want you to have a time that is just about acceptable enough to keep paying for it.

The only one of their games I've heard people get excited about is Hi-Fi Rush, and you can see here what they think of that. Clearly it didn't maintain enough Monthly Active Users, or have a short enough Time To Purchase or whatever other bullshit mobile-era metric determines whether a studio lives or dies.

This is such a fanboy opinion. Sony killed basically their entire Japanese Development, had 13 GaaS in development at the same time and actively are holding back the standard of Cross Save. They give plenty of reasons to not be the 'gamer' console. Especially now when they are also beginning to drop games on gamepass.

Ironically we still know of more single player games coming to Xbox then games coming to Sony outside of Spider-Man Leaks.

Fallout is currently the hottest game on the market thanks to the Show on top of this.

This really fucking sucks but damn stop trying to use this as a way to promote your team
- What are you talking about?
  
  Sony's Japan studio's own library was always gimmicky games that were basically tech demos- Ape Escape was for the Dual Analog controller, LocoRoco for the PSP, Gravity Rush for the Vita, Knack to be a pack-in for the PS4, and games for VR, Move Eye toy, etc. In fact it's kind of hard to find games they did on their own because they've always been mostly a support studio even going back to the PS1's launch lineup, and they are continuing that. There have been several studios that make original games that started as part of Sony Japan that have been spun off into separate teams too.
  
  I'm struggling to think of many studios Sony has closed. Sony London studios was similar to Japan- mostly just games to go with hardware gimmicks like the EyeToy, SingStar, and Wonderbook. It's even harder to find studios that Sony has purchased and then closed or turned into a support studio- I guess you could count that Psygnosis was purchased and merged into London studios back in the 90's, but considering they went 20 years between that merger and closing I doubt there were many Psygnosis devs left there.
  
  A quick search pulls up PixelOpus, a tiny studio Sony formed from 9 college grads with a couple of industry veterans to lead them They released 2 small games and were closed last year.
  
  I don't mean to be too defensive of Sony- they did close one of their own studios and laid off ~900 people this year. But it's not really a comparison to Microsoft who now has a long history of buying 3rd party studios, mismanaging them, and closing them.
  
  I'm also confused about your comment about Xbox making more single player games than Sony. First of all... I would expect that to generally be true. It looks like Sony owns 21 studios while Microsoft had 40 as of the Activision-Blizzard acquisition. And while a lot hasn't been announcedwith release dates, we know of a handful of single player games Sony has in the works- Horizon 3, TLOU3, Ghosts of Tsushima 2, and new IP's from Bend, Housemarq, and BluePoint. Plus Wolverine, and you could argue whether Physint should count or not since that's a partnership between Kojima and Sony-owned Columbia Pictures. If you're trying to imply that Sony is abandoning single-player games or something that's pretty far from the truth.
- Yeah sony hasn't been the gaming juggernaut that guy remembers in a very long time.
And this is WHY the smaller studios are on the chopping block and not core Bethesda.

Because smaller games that are incredibly solid don't matter. What matters are AAA tentpoles. And Tango's A/AA games were "lukewarm" at best. They had an AMAZING B/A game but fuck 'em. Same with Arkane Austin

And... probably same with Obsidian this fall (?) when their Elder Pillars game comes out and people decide it isn't Skyrim so it is bad. Ignore that Pentiment was amazing or their long legacy as one of the best studios in CRPGs. People will just talk doom and gloom because it isn't The Last Of Us.

Which will lead to MS continuing to try to be Sony rather than take advantage of the studios they actually have. And people will continue to talk about how they can't compete with Sony because they don't have a Horizon Zero Dawn.

I've been saying it ever since MS started buying every studio they could. They have an AMAZING roster and can basically dominate the market by "flooding" it with high production value "indie" games. But... people want their AAA tentpoles.
We don't talk about how they racked up hundreds of thousands of negative reviews in three days last week with their shitty business decisions.

We all know this was completely necessary at any level, but why the hifi guys? Aren't they the best bets you could hope to invest in? They make good games that sell decently with less investment than AAA massive failures need.

Honestly all these tech layoffs could really come bite back publishers and the big tech in the near future.
Theres a lot new talent for competitors to snatch and fraction of these developers might even form up new studios to make the next big thing.

Just a reminder that buying this game no longer supports the devs

Sail the seas friends

I wonder how many promises Microsoft made to the FCC and other regulators about how their mergers and acquisitions wouldn't result in layoffs?

I guess redfall ain't getting those characters people already paid for.

capitalism ruins absolutely everything

I see no mention of Emil Pagliarulo's head rolling. Still worried about Elder Scrolls 6

Fuck you, Microshit.

allowing the deal to happen was a big mistake.

ooh, EA has competition

This is a meme at this point right? I can’t remember the last time EA actually did anything remotely as bad.
- EA has been famous for buying up game studios only to shut them down shortly after back in the 90s
- @SuperSaiyanSwag @Sam_Bass yep. Its more like "ubisoft got competition"

I'm sure there will be a headcount of how many people will be leaving/fired.

But from the sounds of it, they are folding game devs into other teams.