Redfall was originally released on 2 May 2023 on PC and the Xbox Series X/S. It’s a multiplayer loot shooter from Arkane Studios but the game has been ravaged by critics and gamers alike for being broken and bad. Our review pretty much said the same.

According to a new Bloomberg report, the game went through a hellish development, including a lack of clear direction, a high turnover of staff, and insufficient resources.

Based on the accounts of over a dozen anonymous sources who worked on the title, the project initially started development in 2018 after being pitched to staff as a “multiplayer Arkane game”. However, they found that confusing, considering that the developer was best known for immersive sim games. As a result, many experienced developers who weren’t interested in making a multiplayer game reportedly left the studio, with almost three-quarters of the Arkane Austin staff who had worked on 2017’s Prey left the company by the time Redfall was finished.

When development Redfall started, Bethesda’s parent company ZeniMax (at the time) was reportedly pushing its studios to develop live service titles, and Redfall apparently had microtransaction plans in place for three years before it was scrapped in 2021. However, Microsoft acquired ZeniMax in a US$7.5 billion deal, some Arkane staff reportedly hoped the Xbox maker might cancel Redfall or reboot it as a single-player game. Microsoft took a hands-off approach to Bethesda studios.

If any of this is true, now it’s much clearer as to why Redfall is as bad as it is.