redfall Being always online could be a thing of the past. Arcane vampire game made headlines for all the wrong reasons when a Official FAQ revealed it would require an internet connection even for single player content. That could change, however, according to a report by Eurogamer.
Since then, developer Arkane seems not to have fallen on deaf ears to criticism from fans and industry insiders. In a new one Interview with Eurogamer, redfall Director Harvey Smith told the outlet that the team was looking into reversing the always-online requirement that launches his game.
The Redfall developer is working on a reversal of the single player always online restriction https://t.co/bXlkes9wSK
— Eurogamer (@eurogamer) March 22, 2023
When asked about people wanting to play offline, Smith responded to Eurogamer by explaining how there are two ways to respond to criticism from fans. One would be to point out that all of our devices are currently connected to the internet and tell people to deal with it, but Smith believes that response lacks empathy.
“There are people who live in places where there are outages or their broadband sucks,” Smith said, “or they compete with their family members because their mom is streaming a movie or their brother’s is streaming on a different device. And so I think it’s a valid criticism.”
Smith went on to say that he was looking at a solution from the point of view of empathy.
“We are listening. And we’ve already started work to address this in the future. We need to do some things like encrypt your save games and do a lot of UI work to support that…but we’re actively reviewing and working on fixing that in the future.”
To allay fears of microtransactions or in-game purchases, Smith replied that there will be no such thing redfall. The online requirement was not required for players to open their wallets. It basically boiled down to wanting to gather telemetry data so Arkane could tweak problem areas (Smith gives an example of a faulty ladder). Another looks at ways to implement accessibility features based on player interaction.
While redfall will continue to launch with this online requirement, there is a future option for players to be able to complete their vampire hunt offline. redfall is scheduled for release on May 2nd, 2023 for PC and Xbox Series X|S.
