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Including Redfall developer Arkane Austin and Hi-Fi Rush maker Tango Gameworks.
"Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of GRTV News.
Today we have a very big one to talk about, because we're going to be talking about the big news from yesterday, which is basically that Xbox, Microsoft through Xbox are shutting down four studios, four studios that make up the Bethesda Game Studios family as well, which are by part part of the Xbox Game Studios family."
"Now these aren't just small studios, these are, well a couple of them are smaller ones, but there are a couple of very high profile studios here that have been shut down and there's a lot of repercussions that's involved, so we're going to dive straight in and look at the details before talking more about this."
"So Xbox is shutting down Arkanoff's Tentango Gameworks and two other studios, Redfool will receive no further support and refunds are beginning to be issued, while Mighty Doom another affected game from another closed developer will also be shut down this August.
So if you've been holding your breath on more Redfool content following its disastrous launch a year ago, you might want to exhale pretty soon, Microsoft and Xbox has announced the shocking news that it will be closing down four unique studios, including Redfool developer Arkane Austin and Hi-Fi rush creator Tango Gameworks."
"Arkane Austin has taken to social media to confirm this news, adding that Redfool will be developed no further, that players who purchase the game's hero pass off premium biteback edition or biteback upgrade, will be eligible for refund and that Arkane Leon will remain unaffected and will continue to work on its upcoming projects like Marvel's Blade. As for Redfool, the servers will remain active going forward, but how long remains to be seen. And this is a statement from Arkane Austin. I'm not going to read it, if you want to read it all you can find it here, but it's basically a summary of, well this is a summary of that, so yeah. Tango Gameworks has confirmed this report to an statement post on X, adding that its games will remain playable everywhere they are today. Much shorter, more concise statement from Tango. And then it said that both Alpha Dog Games, Mighty Doom and Roundhouse Games support studio are also being shut down, with the latter set to be incorporated into ZeniMax Online Studios. Alpha Dog has posted its own statement, noting that Mighty Doom will not be surviving this purge and that the game will be shutting down on August 7th."
"Players are no longer able to purchase and acquire in-game currency with real money.
That's again, what they said here. As per the full number of affected developers and what the future will hold for the IP that was in development by the affected studio currently remains up in the air, expect to hear more soon. So there are a couple of weird things here because, well A, the four studios that are being closed, only one of them really is like a, it's like a minor studio, well it's like a, yeah a minor studio in a way. Because Roundhouse Games being a support studio, um, it was already working on The Elder Scrolls and ZeniMax, so it's not, it's not very pleasant to hear that it's being closed down, but they are being incorporated into, into the ZeniMax Online Studios family, um, to be able to continue their work on The Elder Scrolls Online. So that's not the worst bit of it. Alpha Dog Games being shut down is a bit more of a surprise, um, again though, this is a developer that has worked on Mighty Doom, so it's not like, you know, this isn't a huge AAA high profile game, it's a mobile game."
"So it's disappointing to see that Alpha Dog has also been axed, but, um, it's not, again, it's not like a massively high profile developer. Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks are completely different stories though. Now Arkane Austin, the big story is obviously Redfall, but Arkane Austin has been involved with a whole bunch of different games in the past, um, including like Dishonored and whatnot. So it's, you know, you look at it and it's like, it's a really big deal that this developer has been shut down, and, um, yeah, you can look at Redfall and say that obviously that game didn't perform very well and it was probably a contributing factor, but at the same time, the Xbox brass has said multiple times that they are committed to restoring Redfall and getting it to where it was promised to be. They've said multiple times that they have faith in Arkane Austin and getting this to this point, and yet here we are a year after Redfall and it's been shut down. So that's really disappointing news. Tango Gameworks to me is the biggest kick in the teeth out of all of them, because last year Xbox didn't have many home runs. Forza Motorsport was a pretty good game. Starfield was, you know, probably did quite well financially, but it was never like a massively acclaimed title. But Hi-Fi Rush was, and again, you can't expect Hi-Fi Rush to have sold in the same way as Starfield, because it didn't get any marketing. It was shadow dropped, and yet people really liked Hi-Fi Rush and it did really well on Game Pass, and it made, it got loads of awards, and, you know, Tango Gameworks has all these other projects in the works, and now it's been shut down. And it's, it's all come out of the blue, out of nowhere, this, um, seemingly, this hasn't been something that's been in, you know, in the process of happening for a while. This has just happened very recently and soon, and I think that it, it shows the state of the situation when all of the announcements from, you know, different developers all use the exact same format. They all have that same black thing, white box, white text. They're all sort of like in the same place, and none of them are giving particularly broad statements. It's all just very basic, like this is what's happening. It's, it's so sad to see it like this, and again, we, we don't know, um, we don't know the extent of the amount of developers that are losing their jobs as part of this, you know. These are four developers that are being shut down, so there's going to be a fair few layoffs, and this all comes up to recently, you know, Microsoft did that big round of Xbox layoffs, um, yeah, again, quite recently, where about 2,000 people lost their jobs, and now we have this, and it's, you know, Microsoft is a massive company that makes, it's like the most valuable company in the world, and we're seeing developers, creative studios like this that do great work being torn apart because of it, and it's, it's one of those things, it's really frustrating because on one hand, people always say, you know, people always sort of champion Microsoft for its efforts in the consumer space with Game Pass, and cloud gaming, and cross saves, and cross play, and all that different stuff, but, like, this is the other side of Microsoft being a, you know, trillion dollar corporation, and, you know, if you think this is going to stop anytime, this is sort of like the last bit of it, it's not, you know, Bethesda, the acquisition of Bethesda was years ago at this point, and we're still seeing things like this happen. Activision Blizzard was acquired, like, you know, in the summer, and if you think that Activision Blizzard aren't gonna be facing things like this in the future, well, they probably will be, you know, the, the acquisition of Activision Blizzard is, is gonna be good for a consumer who, you know, buys things on Game, who uses Game Pass and whatnot, don't get me wrong, but it's not necessarily gonna be good for the developers, because Microsoft, at the end of the day, they don't need Activision Blizzard to succeed, Microsoft is absolutely massive, it was, it was always, like, a greedy acquisition, I've, I've just been saying that for ages, that I think that it's a, it's not necessarily something that needs to happen, but, but yeah, no, it's, this is such a sad thing to see, to see so much creativity just squandered because of some, you know, minor financial sort of margin to hit, and, you know, I, I can understand, again, I can understand certain choices that have been made here, you know, with the support studio being incorporated, does any max cost cutting measures, some people lose their jobs, it's not exactly a nice story, but I can see where the angle is there, Alpha Dog, Mighty Doom, probably not performing so well, you know, Mobile Studio, again, not my situation, but I can understand it, Arcane Austin, yeah, there's lots of promises made, Red Bull bombed particularly badly, but I can, again, you can, like, a really, really long stretch, you can kind of see that, but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why Tango Gameworks suffered this fate as well, especially with its recent offering, but, you know, let's know what you think about it, I could sort of rant about this for another 20 minutes, because I think it's such a really disappointing bit of news, we'll see, again, we'll see more about this, so expect more developments about this exact situation in the near future, but, yeah, four studios are gone, really disappointing news, I don't know what else to say, really, so, this has been a very, quite sad episode of GeoTV News, but hopefully tomorrow will be something more exciting, who knows, stay tuned for it, though, so, see you all on the next one, take care, everyone."