You might be all starry-eyed over Bethesda as Starfield’s early access period shows off their latest hit, but let’s not forget the publisher was involved with one of 2023’s worst releases—Redfall.
The open-world vampire shooter arrived in truly awful shape, but it seems that Bethesda has no plans to give up on the Arkane-developed title just yet.
“We don’t quit or abandon stuff just because it didn’t start right,” Bethesda’s head of global publishing Pete Hines said in a Sept. 1 interview with GamesIndustry.biz. Hines called Redfall’s launch a learning experience and compared its problem to previous launch blunders like The Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76.
“The Elder Scrolls Online’s PC launch was not flawless but we stuck with it. Now it’s like this insanely popular multiplatform,” Hines explained, drawing comparisons between Redfall’s launch and Fallout: 76. “Okay, we didn’t get the start we wanted, but it’s still a fun game… and we’re going to keep working on it.”
General improvements, such as a boost to 60 FPS, were in the pipeline according to Hines, who wants to see Redfall improve and return to gamers’ hands in the long term thanks to services such as Game Pass.
Hines is convinced that Redfall will live for the next decade on Game Pass, and while we aren’t so sure anyone will care, hearing Bethesda committed to fixing the game is a solid start.
Redfall arrived back in May to terrible reviews from critics and players. The reaction was so bad that Xbox boss Phil Spencer spoke out, addressing gamebreaking performance issues that plagued Redfall’s launch. From the start Xbox players were promised 60 FPS; however, this basic feature still isn’t available at the time of writing.
Outside of framerate problems, Redfall has a lot of issues that need to be fixed before it blooms into the flower that Bethesda believes it’s capable of. If you’re interested in trying Redfall the game is available on Xbox Game Pass.
