Redfall Devs “Working Actively” To Drop The Always-Online Requirement In Single-Player

It looks like Redfall will not be an always-online experience after a certain period. The new update stems from the game director’s interview with Eurogamer, where they expressed concerns about the old decision and appreciated the criticism of the community. The team is now “working actively” to change the repulsed impediment, which resulted in a lot of backlash from the community after the initial announcement.

The game director Harvey Smith iterated his concerns with the always-online approach in the upcoming Redfall, ensuring that the team has accepted the criticism and will eventually drop the way it works for the betterment of the community. Moreover, the director conceded that not every gamer has good access to the internet around the globe, which was one of the main reasons why the community disliked the always-online requirement.

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. And so I think it is a legitimate critique,” said Harvey Smith.

Arkane Studios has reportedly already started working on making the change internally, “We listen. And we have already started work to address this in the future.” The team is currently toiling towards making the essential conversion so the always-online requirement can be peeled off. Redfall director clarifies, “We have to do some things like encrypt your save games and do a bunch of UI work to support it.”

Redfall team will fix the tedious requirement “in the future,” but it is unclear whether the prominent change will arrive before the release. It makes sense for the update to dock after the title’s release, as removing the need for constant internet would need Redfall to go through a bundle of internal changes before it can be smoothly realized. The director also went on to explain the reasoning behind making such a decision in the first place.

It allows us to do some accessibility stuff. It allows us for telemetry, like – if everybody’s falling off ladders and dying, holy **** that shows up. And so we can go and tweak the ladder code. There are reasons we set out to do that that are not insidious,” added Harvey Smith.

The initial polemical revelation was made on a FAQ page while answering a community question, which led most of the community to bring out their pitchforks in the form of backlash. Redfall will require an internet connection whether you play in single-player mode or co-op until the change is made for the former mode. The community has commemorated the fact that Arkane Austin has listened to the criticisms.

It is worth noting that Redfall’s multiplayer mode will also not tether the players together; in other words, it will allow the survivors to traverse the map and explore freely during a session. However, it is encouraged for the players to stick together while playing due to the nature of the game.

Redfall is an upcoming open-world endeavor by Arkane Austin, the award-winning studio behind Prey and Dishonored. It is set to release this year on May 2nd, 2023. It will arrive on next-gen platforms only, namely Steam, Windows, Xbox Series S, and the Series X. 

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