‘Redfall’ studio is working to fix controversial always-online requirement
Harvey Smith, creative director for Arkane Studios and its upcoming shooter Redfall, has shared that the developer is working to fix the game’s single-player internet requirement.
Back in February, publisher Bethesda announced that Redfall will launch with Denuvo —anti-piracy software that requires players have an internet connection to play any games that use the system.
This proved controversial for two reasons: the first is that Denuvo is alleged to cause performance issues, and the second is that Denuvo would make an internet connection mandatory even for Redfall‘s single-player story.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Smith acknowledged the concerns surrounding Redfall‘s online requirements.
“There are people who live in places where there are outages or their broadband is shitty, or they’re competing with their family members, because their mum’s streaming a movie or their brother’s on another device,” said Smith. “So I think it is a legitimate critique.”
“We do take it with a lot of empathy,” he continued, adding that Arkane has “already started work to address in the future”.
“We have to do some things like encrypt your save games and do a bunch of UI work to support it. And so we are looking into – I’m not supposed to promise anything – but we’re looking into and working actively toward fixing that in the future.”
Elsewhere, Smith also claimed that a PS5 version of Redfall was originally in the works, but was cancelled by Microsoft when it purchased parent company Bethesda Softworks.
However, Smith admitted that it let Arkane “worry about one less platform, one less complexity” and suggested that Microsoft‘s Game Pass could lead to greater success for Redfall.
“Game Pass has a ton of people that can play,” said Smith. “It could be our biggest game ever because of the 30million Game Pass [users] or whatever that is.”
In other gaming news, Diablo 4 fans have claimed the game’s recent beta broke their graphics card.
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Andy Brown
NME
