Xbox has today announced stunning cuts and studio closures affecting a slew of development houses under the Bethesda banner.
Redfall and Dishonored developer Arkane Austin will close, and its online co-op vampire shooter will not be updated further.
Hi-Fi Rush and The Evil Within developer Tango Gameworks will also close. Mighty Doom studio Alpha Dog Studios will close and see its game switched off on 7th August.
Roundhouse Studios, born from the ashes of Human Head Studios, will meanwhile be merged with The Elder Scrolls Online developer ZeniMax Online Studios.
In addition to the losses associated with the above four studios, other jobs will go to Bethesda’s publishing and corporate teams.
The news was broken by an email from head of Xbox game studios Matt Booty sent to staff this morning and subsequently shared with Eurogamer (first reported by IGN).
“Today it was announced that Tango Gameworks will close,” a notice posted to the studio’s X account confirmed. “Thank you to everyone that explored the worlds we created. Hi-Fi Rush along with Tango’s previous titles will remain available and playable everywhere they are today.”
Founded in 2010 by the legendary Shinji Mikami, Tango Gameworks released The Evil Within in 2014 and a sequel in 2017. It followed that with Ghostwire: Tokyo in 2022, before last year’s surprise release of Hi-Fi Rush – widely seen as one of the best games of 2023.
A similar notice posted to Arkane Studios’ X account confirmed Arkane Austin’s closure, and the end of all development on Redfall. Plans to add an offline mode to Redfall, previously confirmed to Eurogamer by game director Harvey Smith, have apparently been cancelled. The game’s servers will remain online, for now.
Arkane Austin was founded in 2006 as a satellite team to Arkane Lyon (which is currently working on a Marvel’s Blade game, and has survived today’s cuts). Headed by Harvey Smith, it developed the Dishonored series and 2017’s Prey, before beginning work on Redfall.
“To everyone who has supported the work from our Austin studio over the years, thank you,” the studio wrote today. “Thank you for spending time in our worlds and making them your own.”
There’s an additional issue here in that Redfall owners who purchased the Hero Pass or premium Bite Back upgrade are still awaiting content they paid for, more than a year on. These players will now “be eligible to receive the value of the upgrade”, the studio wrote, with a website link now available through which to apply.
A “reprioritisation of titles and resources”
Writing to Xbox and Bethesda staff today in an email announcing the huge changes, Microsoft’s Matt Booty said that today’s cuts and closures were “grounded in prioritising high-impact titles and further investing in Bethesda’s portfolio of blockbuster games and beloved worlds.”
“To double down on these franchises and invest to build new ones requires us to look across the business to identify the opportunities that are best positioned for success,” Booty continued. “This reprioritization of titles and resources means a few teams will be realigned to others and that some of our colleagues will be leaving us.”
Booty wrote that these changes were “not a reflection of the creativity and skill” of staff at the now-closed studios, but that the company wanted “to create capacity to increase investment in other parts of our portfolio and focus on our priority games” .
“Bethesda remains one of the key pillars of Xbox with a strong portfolio of amazing games and thriving communities,” Booty concluded, pointing to the upcoming launches of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and updates for existing games such as Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls Online, plus Starfield’s Shattered Space expansion, as Bethesda continues to try and improve that game’s fortunes.
“Great teams are sunsetting before our eyes again”
Responding to the news, Arkane Lyon boss Dinga Bakaba wrote: “This is absolutely terrible.”
“To any executive reading this, friendly reminder that video games are an entertainment/cultural industry,” Bakaba wrote in a series of posts on X. “Your business as a corporation is to take care of your artists/entertainers and help them create value for you.
“Don’t throw us into gold fever gambits, don’t use us as strawmen for miscalculations/blind spots, don’t make our work environments darwinist jungles. You say we make you proud when we make a good game. Make us proud when times are tough. We know you can, we seen it before.
“For now, great teams are sunsetting before our eyes again, and it’s a fucking gut stab.”
Microsoft bought Bethesda for $7.5bn in 2020. As of today, the company now consists of Arkane Lyon, Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, MachineGames and ZeniMax Online Studios.
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