Redfall Is Trying to Drop Its Always-Online Requirement

Redfall has certainly been through the wringer before it has even launched. Thankfully, some of the issues gamers have with the title are being addressed. For starters, the shooter is now confirmed to ship on a physical disc, following conflicting information. And now, it looks like the game may not have an always-online requirement. According to an interview with Eurogamer, game director Harvey Smith and his team are looking into removing the single-player always-online condition for Redfall.

Smith rightfully pointed out the issues surrounding keeping a single-player mode locked into an always-online component: “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.”

Of course, Smith points out the hardships in trying to remove such an always-online restriction for a game like Redfall, including encrypting save games. But the developers at Arkane are listening to fan feedback and are “looking into and working actively toward fixing that in the future.” Smith also mentioned the online requirement was to help them understand how people play using telemetry info to tweak difficulty / accessibility and reiterated there is no in-game store or microtransactions.

It’s good to see at least one developer address this issue. (Hopefully Rocksteady Studios will follow suit.) Players should have the luxury of playing a game by themselves without needing an online connection. You would think this should be obvious, but apparently, game developers need to learn this lesson from the fans.