He says it plainly

Harvey Smith, former creative director at Arkane Austin and now CEO of Black Pony Immersive, says Redfall was a mistake from the premise up.

“we never should have been working on a games-as-a-service game”

Wrong team, wrong game

The people who built some of the best immersive sims ever made spent years on a vampire-themed open-world multiplayer shooter. It landed badly.

The studio paid for it

A year after release, Microsoft shut down Arkane Austin. Nearly 100 people lost their jobs while the team was still trying to fix the game.

Laid off, then back to finish

The developers begged Microsoft to let them return and ship update 1.4. It worked. Former staff came back briefly and completed the final patch.

One piece of it mattered

Smith points to a section co-director Ricardo Bare wrote for someone he loves, about community and what separates a human from a vampire.

“what separates a human from a vampire in the metaphorical sense”

Caught in the console war

A PS5 version was planned, then cancelled after Microsoft bought Bethesda. The bad reviews became ammunition for Sony fans arguing Xbox was failing.

Everything hit at once

Executive producer Ben Horne lists the $70 price and a performance mode held back to smooth out framerate dips, which turned into a 60 FPS scandal at launch.

“there were many things that seemed to converge all at once”

Back to what they know

Horne calls the core problem working outside the team's expertise. Black Pony hasn't shown its first game, but it will be an immersive sim.

“Getting back to what we do best was the number one priority”