Arkane Studios Devs React To Arkane Austin Shutdown, Call It "Absolutely Terrible"

Developers at Arkane Studios are reacting to the announcement of the shutdown of Arkane Austin, calling it "absolutely terrible".

[XiNatsuDragnel]

Of course it is this is why big companies gobbling other companies is bad.

[Cacabunga]

yes and this is what happens when you sign pact with the devil himself..

[rakentaja]

The situation looks like this in reality. Of course, I don't know all the nuances, but an independent studio generally wants to go under a big company to get financial backing so they can make the games they dream of. Then a bad game is made...for some reason...the big company gets disappointed, a lot of money was spent on them and they had to shut down the company they bought, because they lost faith in them. That's exactly what happened. I don't know what happened to Tango...

[I_am_Batman]

@rakentaja: You don't need to sell your company to get financial backing. Not to mention that the idea that you're going to be allowed to make the game of your dreams under a big publisher is naive to begin with.

More often than not, indies are just bad at the financial side of the business. It's common to underestimates the production budget needed and hire too many people leaving the studio in a vulnerable position. A lot of them sell out of necessity, not because they want to.

[crazyCoconuts]

There are textbook scenarios where it's good...
Microsoft is definitely not one of those scenarios

[RhinoGamer88]

I get it, but frankly, AA failed pretty badly on Redfall. The XBOX production team is also to blame (they are safe as usual) for releasing a game this hyped in a sorry state. There are lots of fail points on Redfall, but only Arkane bears the pain.

[MrBaskerville]

They were set up to fail by Zenimax and had been for a while. They should have done Prey 2, but instead were forced to do mp games.

[-Foxtrot]

Apparently even with Prey they wanted to name it something else, they didn't want to use the Prey name because it had nothing to do with it.

That alone put a lot of people off playing it out of support for the original.

[MrBaskerville]

@Foxtrot
Yeah, it was a mess, that whole business. Could probably also have done a killer Dishonored 3 if given the chance, right after Prey, when they had a top tier team.

[darthv72]

the game (at launch) certainly wasnt all that. the performance update later on made it better but Im glad I got the special edition controllers when I did. Those are nice.

[crazyCoconuts]

True. We don't know exactly who to blame for what, but end of the day you're not getting paid to put out crappy games.
I hope at least they kept the good people and moved them into other divisions

[PapaBop]

"Welcome to the Xbox family, graveyard is out back, what should we put on your epitaph?" Microsoft turning into this generation's EA, spend all those billions on Activision while closing studios they've run into the ground.

[-Foxtrot]

Reminds me of that old EA studio meme

https://i.ibb.co/1MbwRp6/12...

[TheColbertinator]

lmao forgot about that meme. Still pissed at EA for shutting down Westwood, Pandemic, Origin and Maxis. I will never forgive them for that.

[Hofstaderman]

Papa Satya wants his ROI. No free lunch.

[rlow1]

Why I’m really disappointed in Xbox and MS at large. At the same time let’s not pretend that somehow this isn’t an industry issue. Theirs a graveyard behind every major publisher. The only company I haven’t seen canning people is Nintendo and let’s hope that trend continues.

[northpaws]

Yup, when a big company grab you, they would like... "We are family, we are match in the heaven!"... and then the minute the bonus check is too small... "Sorry, turns out I was wrong, but since we own you now, we cannot release you, we will just wipe you off from the earth."

[Demetrius]

Just another way so the weirdos can pocket money from the devs I bet

[Chocoburger]

Yet another reason not to sell yourselves to a major corporation. But what did these people expect when the game flopped so hard? They should have seen it coming.
Expect more studios to close in the not-too-distance future.

[boing1]

Well, they bought Bethesda because it was drowning. And whoever thought they bought them to save the people or teams, was wrong. They just wanted the IPs. That was the real deal.

[Barlos]

Microsoft doesn't care about the studios it absorbs, or the people for that matter. It's the IPs they want, nothing else.

[Rimeskeem]

So Bethesda gets bought out and the developers at the studio are forced to publish a half-baked game. The game does horribly so now they are being shut down? The devs that made Deathloop, Prey, and Dishonored make one bad game and just like that...