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Arkane is working on removing the always online restriction of Redfall

The developer is planning a u-turn on this feature.

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There are some game design features that really never go down well with the community. Heavy microtransactions and loot boxes have for the longest time been the most notable, but as we transition to a more online gaming industry, developers have started making their games always need to be online, and players typically hate it.

Especially when a game is either entirely single player, or can be played in its entirety alone, as is the case of Arkane's Redfall. Ever since it was announced that the game will require a constant online connection, fans have been fuming, and Arkane has taken that criticism into account and announced that it is working on a way to go back on this decision.

As reported on by Eurogamer, game director Harvey Smith touched on this matter and stated: "There are two ways developers could react to that, right? They could say: 'Oh, my God, you're always online. If you get on your Steam, and it's not online, you freak out. If you get on your Xbox, and you can't get the latest patch, or see what your friends are doing, you freak out. You want to be always online!' But that response, I think, lacks empathy.

"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."

Smith continued: "We do take it with a lot of empathy. We listen. And we have already started work to address this in the future. We have to do some things like encrypt your save games and do a bunch of UI work to support it. And so we are looking into - I'm not supposed to promise anything - but we're looking into and working actively toward fixing that in the future."

As for why Redfall needed to be online in the first place, Smith also touched on that and stated that it was related to accessibility and telemetry efforts and that it allows Arkane to see where players are struggling the most and what needs to be tackled first.

We recently had the chance to play a bunch of Redfall, and you can find our preview right here.

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