It’s been a tough yr for online game studios, with layoffs and closures affecting virtually everybody (Harmony developer Firewalk Studios and Neon Koi being the newest). A few of the greatest got here from Microsoft, which has laid off about 2500 staff to this point and closed down studios like Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin.
Whereas some pointed on the failure of Redfall as the explanation for the latter’s closure, former Arkane president and founder Raphael Colantino nonetheless feels it was “not a very good resolution.”
“I believe for those who look somewhat bit, it’s apparent that Arkane Austin was a really particular group that made some cool issues and will pull it off once more. I believe it was a choice that got here right down to, ‘We have to minimize one thing.’ Was it to please the buyers, the inventory market? They’re taking part in a special recreation,” mentioned Colantino to PC Gamer.
Having left Arkane in 2017 and established WolfEye Studios, which launched Bizarre West in 2022 (and is seemingly engaged on a brand new sci-fi RPG), Colantino says it’s “laborious to know” why Microsoft shut down the studio. “The foundations that they play, we would not perceive them. It’s a special factor. It’s laborious to know why they did what they did. The one factor that I stand by is saying that the precise selection of killing Arkane Austin was not a very good resolution.”
He additionally feels that recreating the studio’s magic will likely be not possible. “Recreating a really particular group like that’s, I might dare to say, not possible. It takes perpetually. When you might have that magic of Harvey [Smith] and Ricardo [Bare] and many others, that each one come collectively, it’s a selected second in time and house that simply labored out this fashion, that took perpetually to achieve. These folks collectively can actually make magic.
“It’s not like, ‘Doesn’t matter, we’ll simply rehire.’ No, attempt it. That’s what huge teams do on a regular basis. They attempt to simply rent massively and overpay folks to create these magic teams. It doesn’t work like this. So, to me, that was silly. However what do I do know?”
Although Arkane Austin is gone, Tango Gameworks was saved by Krafton, which acquired it and the Hello-Fi Rush IP from Microsoft. The writer has since hyped Hello-Fi Rush 2 as considerably of an open-world expertise with extra “dynamic” environments. Work paused on the sequel resulting from Tango’s closure, however it can resume “quickly.” Keep tuned for updates within the meantime.