Ex-Arkane Austin boss condemns studio closure

The former president of game developer Arkane has come out to condemn Microsoft’s closure of Arkane Austin earlier this year, saying that it “was not a good decision.”

Microsoft acquired Arkane parent company ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion in 2021, which also brought studios like Bethesda Softworks and subsidiaries like id Software (Doom), Tango Gameworks (Hi-Fi Rush), and MachineGames (Indiana Jones and the Great Circle) under the Xbox umbrella. However, Microsoft shut down Arkane Austin along with Tango, Mighty Doom’s Alpha Dog Studios, and internal development studio Roundhouse Games earlier this year.

Raphael Colantonio, who founded Arkane in 1999 but left in 2017, said in an interview with PC Gamer that Microsoft closing down the Austin branch of the studio (the Lyon office is still up and running) was a shame due to the talent that had to be cut.

“I think if you look a little bit, it’s obvious that Arkane Austin was a very special group of people that have made some cool things and that could pull it off again,” he said. “I think it was a decision that just came down to, ‘We need to cut something.’ Was it to please the investors, the stock market? They’re playing a different game.”

Colantonio’s last project with Arkane was Prey, a horror immersive sim that encapsulates everything great about Arkane’s game design traditions, but its sales underperformed. Arkane Austin moved on to Redfall, which ended up as a disaster for Xbox both critically and financially when it released in 2023. Once Arkane Austin shuttered, development on Redfall ended and Microsoft offered refunds.

Colantonio founded Wolfeye Studios in 2019, and is currently working on an untitled action RPG that looks like a cross between Fallout and Arkane’s Dishonored series. So while he wasn’t there to see the closure in person, he knows that something like it will never happen again.

“Recreating a very special group like that is, I would dare to say, impossible. It takes forever. When you have that magic of Harvey [Smith] and Ricardo [Bare] etc. that all come together, it’s a specific moment in time and space that just worked out this way, that took forever to reach. Those people together can really make magic. It’s not like, ‘Doesn’t matter, we’ll just rehire.’ No, try it. That’s what big groups do all the time. They try to just hire massively and overpay people to create those magic groups. It doesn’t work like this. So to me, that was stupid. But what do I know?”

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) Colantonio added that he stood by his comments. “I voice my opinion when asked and I have empathy for my friends and former employees who were still working at Arkane Austin.”

Arkane Lyon is one of many studios right now working on a Marvel game project: Marvel’s Blade, which is still early in development.