Redfall studio looking into reversing always online requirement for single-player

Arkane is working to eliminate the always online requirement to play Redfall in single-player.

Speaking with Eurogamer, game director Harvey Smith said the team is working to make offline single-player a possibility.

The studio is considering removing the requirement due to backlash from the community.

“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,” said Smith.

“We listen, and we have already started work to address this in the future. We have to do some things like encrypting 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.”

Smith goes on to say the reason Arkane developed the game to be always online was due to allowing the team to do “accessibility stuff.”

“It allows us for telemetry, like – if everybody’s falling off ladders and dying, holy shit that shows up. And so we can go and tweak the ladder code. There are reasons we set out to do that that are not insidious,” Smith added.

In Redfall, you will choose from one of four survivors who must save the town of Redfall by slaying vampires and their human collaborators.

It is set for release on May 2 and will be made available on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Game Pass.