Harvey Smith, co-creator of Dishonored and longtime studio director at Arkane Austin, has shared how stunned he felt when Microsoft made the decision to close the studio in May 2024. The shutdown arrived after Redfall’s rough launch and negative reception, and Smith describes the moment as a genuine shock—especially given the team’s history and the pride he still feels in the group’s work.
Speaking on the My Perfect Console podcast with host Simon Parkin, Smith reflected on Arkane Austin’s journey, from the breakout success of Dishonored in 2012 to the critically admired Prey in 2017, a game many fans still consider underrated. But the conversation inevitably turned to the hardest chapter: learning that the studio was about to be shuttered.
Smith revealed he received a call the night before the news became official. The timing left him sleepless, replaying everything in his head and worrying most about the developers who were early in their careers—people who had only recently entered the industry and had just shipped their first major title with Redfall. For them, he said, the closure wasn’t just disappointing; it was a disorienting, life-changing blow.
He also emphasized how close-knit Arkane’s leadership and staff had been for decades. Smith pointed to long-standing creative relationships, including his work with Ricardo Bare, noting that some team members had been building games together since the late 1990s. From his perspective, the shutdown felt abrupt not only because of the timing, but because it cut short a studio that still believed it had a future.
Smith didn’t dodge responsibility for Redfall’s commercial struggles. He characterized the project as a live-service experiment that didn’t land, with the production further complicated by the realities of developing during the pandemic. Even so, he stressed that the people he worried about most were those who didn’t have years of shipped games behind them—developers whose debut project became tied to a highly public failure and, soon after, a studio closure.
Despite the emotional weight of the decision, Smith said the team pushed forward and focused on improving Redfall. He described the effort behind the 1.4 update as an all-hands sprint, a major internal push to deliver something closer to what Arkane originally wanted the game to be. The patch added an offline mode, adjusted and reworked key systems, and generally reshaped the experience into a more polished version than what players saw at launch.
Smith expressed gratitude that Microsoft allowed the update to happen. In his view, releasing that final patch ensured the team’s work wasn’t simply left behind, and that Redfall could exist in a better state for the people who still wanted to play it. He believes the version available after the patch is meaningfully improved compared to the launch build.
At the same time, Smith made it clear he didn’t agree with the decision to close Arkane Austin. He said he strongly believed in the studio’s future and hinted that the team was already working on something new and exciting. He also disclosed that Arkane Austin had been developing a Blade Runner game—a project he found especially inspiring, raising questions about what the studio might have achieved if it had been given the chance to continue.
