No one has learned anything from watching EA. The studio was hoping Microsoft would cancel Redfall after their purchase of Bethesda.Īrkane will just be the death of another good studio at the hands of an ignorant, pushy publisher. 70% of the company left because of what they were being pushed to do and this was before Micorsoft ever came into the picture. They actively pushed them into the mess we got as Redfall. No one should allow a company to feign ignorance at such an obvious screw-up. Sure its Arkanes fault in the most direct way, but Bethesda and Microsoft remained oblivious to their obligations.

They apparently even got a low internal review of the product before release and the publisher and microsoft still pushed it out the door at premium cost.

You might also say that it was misplaced trust gone wrong, but in the army I learned 'trust but verify.' It isn't like bethesda as a publisher would be unaware that the game was originally being negotiated as a PS5 exclusive, changing at the last minute with the company's handover to xbox, or that covid made the entire production process remote and messy until the last year of a fairly short production cycle. Authority gives responsibility and by saying it is solely the problem of the studio and not the direct overseeing company bethesda is telling bethesda that they don't have responsibility in overseeing the projects that they publish and oversee as admins. Problems at the top are not the problem of the ones at the bottom, but problems at the bottom are everyones fault above. arkane is the studio, bethesda is not just the publisher but also the parent company, its still bethesda's fault for poor oversight of one of their owned studios, and the same responsibility goes up to microsoft game studios. If only we lived in a world where the publisher doesnt influence developers.

The elder scrolls maps redfall