Well, I'm getting 3 to show my allegiance! 

I find it funny how Zenimax goes unscathed during this entire thing. We saw what happened with Fallout 76, YoungBlood, but so much blame, if not all, was on MS for Redfall. If you want to blame MS for not getting involved with the games development and being like, "Okay we need to change this" then very understandable and that is where I fall. People acting like they forced Arkane to make this game is a wild take.

With an attrition rate like that, I wonder if they should go back to co-developing with Lyon for now and Dinga can take over as leader of the next project, less than 100 employees at the Austin office is crazy too, it'll be a very long time before we get another game from them unless they team up with Lyon, it might be hard to hire at Austin in the near future.

The plus side is that we shouldn't have Zenimax (twats) forcing multiplayer onto their studios now but it may be too late for Austin with that attrition rate. We still have Harvey who has proven himself but it seems like Harvey wanted to make Redfall whilst his team at large didn't, I can't help but wonder if they'll be a bit of a team morale breakdown now.

Microsoft should have became involved sooner, but I guess it would have been hard, Zenimax is telling them one thing, Harvey also wants to make the game, a lot of other employees don't, who do they listen to, either way, this ultimately starts with Zenimax and Microsoft should have been involved sooner with Arkane sooner and got a feeling of the studio morale, and helped where they could.

Also, while hands off works with some studios, in fact, I'd argue it works with most studios, as we've had multiple good-amazing titles with this "hands off approach" so if we're going to criticise it for bad stuff we need to recognise it for good stuff too. Having said that, Zenimax is TOO hands off, it's even more hands off than what they are with XGS.

Matt Booty needs to be directly involved in overseeing Zenimax because who knows where else this "multiplayer" shit has infested itself. Perhaps Microsoft should do a company wide survey to gather the general mood across Zenimax Studios and if they're happy, if they feel forced to do something they don't want to, if they've ever felt forced, etc.

I stand by that Microsoft shouldn't have cancelled it, I know for a fact if they did we'd have articles ripping them apart, announced or not, it'd be "Microsoft Acquires Bethesda Then Immediately Cancels Projects From Beloved Arkane" and the public would rip them apart just as much as they are now, if not more. In addition to that, Harvey and Ricardo actually wanting to do the game too makes things awkward.

Seems Microsoft had good intentions but there needs to be more communication between Xbox and Zenimax. Though I doubt it could have helped this specific project much, it seems it was doomed from the start due to Zenimax. Like I said, it's understandable why Xbox wouldn't cancel it and it's also understandable why they wouldn't delay it another 2-3 years if they known - The issue is, they should have known.

It's also hard if both publisher and studio management, is telling you one thing. Nobody is ever eager to walk over studio management to get to the regular everyday developers (unless it's an abuse issue), Microsoft should be able to trust management. As they could with Tango, who just released something completely new to them, completely different from their usual skillset which was amazing and with Microsoft's hands off approach.

Matt Booty or whoever definitely needs to start having their eyes on Zenimax though and look into the general feeling of Zenimax Studios. One thing that Xbox could have actually helped with is the understaffed aspect, another thing they could have helped with is providing technical support earlier, but the awkwardness is that Harvey/Ricard wanted to do Redfall but other employees didn't so I don't know what the solution is there.

Besides...We don't know how many of this 70% left before Microsoft even got involved so it may have been too late anyway to save the employees.

Who cares what fucking articles get written. MS needs to worry about what's best for the long term health and productivity of their studios, not what's going to be said by people with little to no insight. If you go check in on the happenings at the studio, and they're pulling a dozen different directions, and leadership and the main dev force aren't on the same page as to what type of game they're making (or whether they even wanna make it at all), you gotta make a tough call. And that call isn't "oh well...let's just keep going like this until the game is done, and figure things out after."

MS ABSOLUTELY should have either canned it, or gotten the team on the same page, and rebooted the project. 

1. Negative PR can be detrimental to a company, as we've seen when Xbox went from Xbox 360 highs to being a joke with Xbox One. We still have people today bitching about Microsoft for Scalebound and they were slaughtered by the media and gamers at the time of cancellation even though we had no information, even when information came out, people still blamed Microsoft.

2. The article very much suggests that Harvey Smith and Ricardo DID want to make Redfall, so if they cancelled it you could very well end up with "Harvey Smith and Ricardo angry at Microsoft for meddling, both leave Arkane" They're damned if they do, damned if they don't, either way some group will be mad. Likely Microsoft didn't even know the state it was in (hence why they should be more hands on) to even consider cancelling it when both Zenimax Management and Redfall Management were hyping the project up behind closed doors and in public.

3. We have no idea when those "70%" left, as that is across the entire project, for all we know, the vast majority left before Microsoft even acquired Zenimax and by then it was obviously already too late to save them and the rest of the employees who remained were maybe the ones who believed in Redfall. I would strongly suspect most people who didn't want to work on Redfall would have left near the start.

Yeah losing 70% of your crew is nuts. Definitely a sign this game was doomed from the start. With MS backing hopeful it relives Zenimax of financial pressures and devs get to make the games they want.

I bet most have joined WolfEye Studios which opened in 2019 since Arkane Austin was only ~100 to begin with. In addition, WolfEye is a fully remote studio too, something which Arkane Austin should start considering because that's a nasty attrition rate and it may be hard to hire developers in that location again. If they lost their sim folk due to focusing on multiplayer but hired multiplayer folk, do they lose their multiplayer folk when they switch back to sim and how do they convince the sim folk to return? Lol.

I dedicate this song to @NobleTeam360 

Potentially detrimental effects are not as bad as guaranteed, real time detrimental effects of coming in and seeing a deteriorating studio. And it's not like devs don't talk to each other and between teams, friends they've made with various studios over the years, etc. That's a lot more meaningful "quiet" negativity and the "loud" buzz of some gaming journalist writing "HA! MS FAILS AGAIN!"

And yes, the best solution here may not have been to outright cancel the project, but I'm preeeetty sure that Harvey and Ricardo didn't wanna make the game as we've seen it launch. Cus it's not very good. So if you don't can it, you gotta reboot it and find a direction for the project that everyone can get on board with. The answer was, CLEARLY, not keep going as is. 

And yes, I'm aware that MS, due to the approach they took, were too out of the loop to actually be in a position to come in and see these things and take action, but the whole point is that they damn well SHOULD be in that position. You SHOULD be in the loop enough to be able to evaluate your studios and make these tough calls when necessary.

Course they didn't want to release a bad game, but the article straight says they wanted to make the game, multiplayer and all, and the multiplayer aspect is a reason why a lot of developers have left, so again, cancelling the project very likely just leaves you with a pissed off Harvey, Ricardo and a few other employees instead who remain and believe in the project. It's easy to say now with this information what Microsoft should have done but both scenarios can very easily end up with angry developers either way.

We don't have enough information on when those 70% left and thus it very well could be that the remaining employees believed in the Multiplayer project and wouldn't be onboard with rebooting the entire project back to a sim, I'm assuming they did hire multiplayer focused developers for a multiplayer focused title and thus they'd likely lose them too.

The project was too deep to do anything drastic to it without pissing off a group of developers no matter what, Imo. Best they could do and should have done is get in earlier, delay it a bit more for polishing (a year?), fix the technical aspects, add some more content, turn a 50 Meta title to a 60-70 Meta title. If they got in very early in development then by all means I would say cancel it or go back to the drawing board.